—in memory of Alex Londres, 1950–1988

I.
There are those who believe
a banyan tree links heaven to earth,

that angels slide off its patient limbs,
dream wanderers drifting down like water

from the helm of a radiant ship,
to mingle freely with women and men.

But I have seen the king cobra
untangle itself from the branches

to lie coiled and braceleted with dew,
its wide hood flared into a spoon

that wags back and forth and back,
stirring the air with death.

II.
Tonight the fertile jungles
are a secret chamber

housed in a vacant thought.
Where the bee prowled for pollen,

where bee-eaters perched on dahlias,
and peacocks wailed like widows,

there is only the tick of snow—
glittering, blowing, chill—

it disguises a garbage can as a nun;
it will inherit our shadows.

III.
The heart thickens like a storm.
You are gone for good,

and I have spent weeks, months
trying to know what it’s like

to be dead.
The snow understands

nothing except itself:
a skull of ice, melting . . .

IV.
When you died, I felt
for the first time like a bride

left standing at the altar,
my shoes full of blood,

the small bones of my fingers
dazzled by pain, the bald rabbi
screaming Hebrew in my ear.
And your touch truly lost forever.

V.
You taught me how to dance.
We were sixteen then, and our bed rose

like a cloudbank or a rare carpet woven
right out of the Arabian Nights.

Soon we fell together into adulthood:
the heavens turned threadbare, strange.

And now you’ve fallen into ground,
where turbaned men in moustaches

kiss your golden lips closed,
as your spirit splashes itself with dust.

VI.
Alex, it has been snowing wildly
for more than a month.

It is sweltering in the house.
My breath is a kind of wake,

my sighs immense and empty.
Is the dark a doorway? Or the light?

I would hold you in my arms, here,
in this Valley-of-Bewildered-Windows,

if only you would slide back down
the long, white branch of your going,

and astonish us with your voice.