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Voluptuous, then merely sticky: to absorb him through my palms. We

were as Danes in Denmark, thus I thought bathwater and longingly,

thought how kneeling hurts the knees, then ghost-gravel. I was

Marriott-air-conditioned unto arctic, not remedied by his warmth

an inch east. I thought surely the ice must calve, then forthwith. Or

was it Ramada, Ramada. In those stories, men stitch coarse blankets

together and spoon, or Strauss-waltz on blinding ice. In those stories,

such measures save no one. What does: deep consummation; marrow

from a shinbone.

Who can give           an account of occasions

Can     mechanized description so falter

Can move toward gesture to scissor the outline

Each to enable a series of seconds    breaking or burning

Can undo the work of a million years         of human love

if I curse you just right

She walks all the time in the Heart Ward.

She makes no sound. She is always alone.

If she is looking in the toilet stall and you come in

she leaves. She calls you Dear.

I was thinking of giving her my flowers.

Just now she came over and said,

‘You don’t have to be writing all the time Dear.’

I said, ‘Do you have any flowers?’

She said, ‘No Dear.’

I said, ‘Do you want any flowers?’

She said, ‘No, no flowers, Dear.’

I said, ‘Don’t you want any flowers at all?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s too late for flowers Dear.’

Though I cannot lavish praise on stamina
            alone, I must acknowledge a femme

            fortitude. Last night, I tell myself,
a misstep at battery’s expense

so as to never consider the sentience
of a pleasure machine.

How her trembling must have lullabied
                   my drunk tongue the intricacies

                   of sexual decorum even in sleep,
how she may have throbbed

all night beside me, anticipating her
own reciprocal and tender invasion.

“He says, why should some people live like kings and the rest like rats? And why should the wealthy, enamored with Europe and the West, dictate how the whole country should dress, talk, live? What if we like our chadors and our Koran? What if we want our own mullahs to rule us, not that saint – what’s his name?” She taps her fingers on the dashboard, trying to remember the name. “ Morteza told me he is worshipped in Europe… I know! Saint Laurent, or something like that…”

“Yves Saint Laurent?” Farnaz laughs. “He’s not a saint, Habibeh. He’s a designer. That’s just his name.”

Rising at four, the students bow to the Buddha one hundred and eight times, and sit meditation for an hour before breakfast, heads rolling into sleep and jerking awake. At the end of the working period the sun rises, a clear, distant light over Su Dok Mountain; they put aside brooms and wheelbarrows and return to the meditation hall. When it sets, at four in the afternoon, it seems only a few hours have passed. An apprentice monk climbs the drum tower and beats a steady rhythm as he falls into shadow.