My Eve of No Nation

Hijacking Philip Metres's "My Heart Like a Nation"

          Of course you have set my verse on fire.
          — Forough Farrokhzad, translated by Elizabeth T. Gray

You who cannot throw off exile,
who, without the clothing of praise,
insist, our people
shall live, in

& beyond our bodies,
mother-loved beyond skin:
unlike you, I am afraid,
we’re alike as human animals,

as angels of no nation, certain
of where tenderness becomes
a cruelty. O you
who did what you had to,

who wrote & were translated
into: -------------------------------.
O my people, I most love your clarity
that loves us beyond gate

or heart or nation, needs
no home but us,
knows state as wind
instead of psalm. We know

peace as a kind of war
unending. I want to give you more
than mere poem—you are braver
than the poets who imitate & fail you:
          (I love you more than the camera loves the hills.
          I love you, like Maya loves you, without evidence.
          I love you beyond allegory, beyond performance of.
          I love you like pink fattens the blossoms, I love you spring.
          I love you like the fall hushes leaves, I love you fruitless
                    & leafless & branchless & unsheltered.
          I love you beyond the small, small of Adam, I love you ribless.
          I love you, like Ladan loves you, into better myth:
                    you, my Eve of no nation, toward whom I reach.)
Apple of no eyes, fruit of no Knowing.
In praise, I reach for you, in praise
                                                    I pluck, fall.