Lacunae
Page 3
If you stand there in the open rain
Your head seems lower in this light
The still
Fresh banana leaves can carry whole fish
The afternoon is a fugitive
You curse the rain outside your window, believing
And if a bird descended on your shoulder
Your hair is suspended in motion
Like wooden planks from a broken ship
Down the river the creatures in the basin prepare
The tree collapsed on itself
The growing fingers of clouds meet
Daughter, along the rim of what you were knitting
Why is the forest canopy strung with rope?
The bird is in the center of the sun
After two days I was luminous and half-naked
The animals were slowly digging in the mud, and were frightened
We came across a hunter disguised as a bird
The dancing girl has veiled her body
This slim body of yours
A tear was painted on your cheek
At the bottom of the pond in your heart
If I can deceive this girl then let me
You tell me I have pine needles for bedding
They do not want to be noticed
A river has gotten away from you. Pools
Only this much do I know
On your body I left behind
Why have my friends spoken of him
Your thin body, encased in my warmth
Brother
What is this belt made of, that clasps your dress to your waist?
Are you the same girl who sheltered the sun in her hair
Who are you going to meet tonight
The rain kisses my face
A lamb blinking over a patch of earth
My tigers have left me
The man who grows flowers in a field
Hair covered a face
Clay pots, shaped from the inside
The red earth changes color when a stream runs over it
Your husband is stretched out on the ground
The girl cries from the number of fingers and toes
Brother, don’t look away when she glances at you
Even as you look at her
As the village goes up
His limbs covered in sweat, and ash
Sister, when you look at him
A sand dune came toward us like a sailing ship
When the strange rain singed the outline of a lake into the sand
I have never seen improvements to the flesh. If a man should steal, let it be sugarcane
Islands are pronounced by the ocean without bubbles
Leave me a stone
And so
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2016 by Daniel Nadler
All rights reserved
First edition, 2016
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eISBN: 9780374714819
First eBook Edition: June 2016