Live long enough and your Father
will serve you grief with oranges
on a silver platter—
Shed enough tears and your Mother
will appear, remorse in one hand,
a pomegranate in the other—
Bury a spouse, and salt will be your servant,
once the beloved’s water leaves, and
you’ve swallowed the last bitter herbs.
Lose a child, and light will tinge
into the birches, the snow,
growing a rusted forest—
Until all is the day kneeling forward—
the oceans, the groves, the cities,—
their prayers, gutted and rising.
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