The World Breaks

When I want to speak of what counts,

I return to the fact

that there’s always a woman in a yellow sari

outside the Taj Mahal.

I want to say that when I once

went down in a submarine

and saw fish shivering past,

their gazes incurious,

wetly amoral,

against the foaming detergent

of an ocean floor, I found it’s even okay

not to have questions

about our true element,

that overwater,

we will always

be out of our depth,

and the man in the gabardine suit

will always

(like the rest of us)

be a spy,

which makes it as simple

as buying the groceries, house-sitting the cat,

and being the medicine,

unique and unlabelled,

for someone at the other end of the line.

The world breaks

(how it breaks) –

eggshells, china cups, countries, bones and all –

and still,

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