The snow on my monitor
is hot. I can’t roll it into a ball
or slip it under your shirt.
Nor can I slide my fingers,
between your moustache and lower lip
as you let out a laugh
at the other end of the Net,
where your camera catches my image.
Do the world’s mountains remain
high and hard to climb, though the world
is now a small village? you type your new poem.
My monitor is tiled with the mountain
on whose lap sits Tehran,
frowning. I cut your icon, naked,
from the chat window, sink it
in a heap of snow. You continue,
Will there again be a day
when we climb a mountain?
Your head cocks off-screen.
My speaker crackles with your voice.
I listen as I search for the images
of mountains—the Alamkoh,
the first one our hiking group
started with; the Andes and the Himalayas
we never got to.
There will be a day, I am sure, when we’ll find
ourselves together, on a mountain top,
I whisper, close my eyes to keep your picture
ascending, alone in the cold, windy bowl
of my eyelids. I try to see Cypress
each day before class, I say when I see
your eyes blur like a lake on the Sabalan
beneath the drizzling rain.
You try to smile, but the corner of your lip
twitches suddenly. I hold on to the arms
of my swivel chair, sit firmly, recite
your last poem: It takes a long time
to get there, but you know I will return.
My ankles are sore from the journey,
but I know I will come back.
Show me the way; blow our songs
into the wind. It will be my last breath
in the desolate air of this mountain.
So finally, you smile.
Yes—smile. Sit back secure and straight
like the flag we hoisted on the Tochal,
sway your body the way you did
when you held me in your arms,
and, there, wave my flag.
Posted by niloufar at April 29, 2004 03:57 PM