A Villanelle

When the ruins dissolve like salt in water,
only when will they have destroyed everything.
Let your blood till then embellish the slaughter,

till dawn soaks up its inks, and "On their blotter
of fog the trees / Seem a botanical drawing."
Will the ruins dissolve like salt in water?

A woman combs—at noon—the ruins for her daughter.
Chechnya is gone. What roses will you bring—
plucked from shawls at dusk—to wreathe the slaughter?

Or are these words plucked from God that you've brought her,
this comfort: They will not have destroyed everything
till the ruins, too, are destroyed? Like salt in water,

what else besides God disappears at the altar?
O Kashmir, Armenia once vanished. Words are nothing,
just rumors—like roses—to embellish a slaughter:

these of a columnist: "The world will not stir";
these on the phone: "When you leave in the morning,
you never know if you'll return." Lost in water,
blood falters; then swirled to roses, it salts the slaughter.


From THE COUNTRY WITHOUT A POST OFFICE (W.W. Norton and Co., 1997)