You never need glasses to mark the contours of your house

It hurts to walk on new legs:   
The curse of consonants, the wobble of vowels.

And you for whom I gave up a kingdom
Can never love that thing I was.

When you look into my past
You see
Only
Weeds and scales.

Once I had a voice.
Now I have legs.

Sometimes I wonder
Was it fair trade?

*        *        *

She knows it’s neither strange nor hard
To raise children on graveyards.

All you need
Is a terrible deed –
Then you bury the dead,
And forget.

*        *        *

Listen to the song of the reed flute:
               It sings of separation.
Torn from the leaf-layered, wind-voiced
               Banks of the pond,
It is joined to sorrow and joy
               By a slender sound.
Who, asked Rumi, can understand
              The reed’s longing to return?
                       Let its raw lips rest then;
                       Let all words be brief then.

And I, O Believers, cried Rumi
                (Having lost the man he loved),
I who am not of the East
                Nor of the West, un-Christian,
Not Muslim or Jew, neither
                Born of Adam nor Eve,
What can I love but the world itself,
                What can I kiss but flesh?
                        Let my raw lips rest then;
                        Let all words be brief.