Dates never change
on the calendar of faith

but light and wind are playing tricks
with the past.

Words split like isotopes
in this peacetime landscape

of abandoned courtyards, empty cradles,
withered gardens and broken roofs.

Only the madman, in his garland of dried flowers,
has the right of passage here

and the blind beggar who recollects nothing
except the spider ticking in his wired skull.

For a second, between two versions
of an echo, the past doesn't happen:

the dome remains, a roc's egg
veined blue, shelled by wind.

Confess
to no crime of identity.

Wait until the guillotine falls
in the vast silence of the heart.