World resolves itself
in crowded crane's
liquid eye, in the cry

of ibis, eye that's gazed
on anyone who's ever walked
this path beneath acacias, through

coffee fields to the river
and back again carrying water or fish.
Cry that cries the morning news.

Come, let's walk this path
together, empty handed, carrying
nothing back but a few words

of a language powerful
enough to turn the river
back on itself, to fill the river

with bloated corpses.
One day I swam far
into Lake Kivu, a thousand

feet of clear water below
and nothing above except sun.
My body suspended on

surface tension, the line
between air and thicker air,
sun the point from which