From the Mercury Fountain, Mahmoud,
flow the tenses: past, present, future;
future-past, first and last, daily acts;
desires; angels of slaughter and syntax;
the zero and the zero plus one; deep eyes,
slender wrists; coffee and speech; sleeplessness
and its dreams; the meadow orchid
low within the grass; evening primrose;
cadence on the felt of the dice
so casually thrown; the tumbled stones,
the field of tolling flowers.

Tenses of the present, Mahmoud, the (im)possible
present, infinite presents threading
now forward, now back. Amidst the
shattered symmetries and scattered fictions,
between actual river and imagined shore,
actual breath of wind through the frayed,

half-open curtain
passing so
suddenly over them
those years ago,
brief flare of the lamp,
shadows that danced
upon a wall.