Poems

I think you are a masquerading nun Who has been lavish with reds, thinking to obliterate herself ... But you should also Have placed a red cloth over your etched face.

Woman twirling a fan, burdened with many colors, I salaam to you. Your youth has gone, but you have made An excellent effigy.

There is a white-jacketed old man, with eyes like milk-drops, Who rakes leaves under hundreds of young low trees With the arms of children and strong bodies. When he has gravely raked them together, He burns them and squats beside the fire, And looks timidly, smilingly ... He never squints up at the green leaves above him.

She strives to braid her scant hair And silence the bundled baby at her side. (Her face has the cast of a frightened novice praying for deftness.) Then she looks at the spinning-legged children in the wading-pool, And the charcoal of her eyes has an odd after-glow, for a moment, As though she half-regretted her tight grey clothes.