RED MUSE POEMS  

He watched her comb out the 
beads of sweat in her hair, 
heard music, an instrumental, 
from some open window; the 
air bitter in the light of what 
lay exposed and could not be 
leapt across, agile though 
we were. 

He would talk for hours 
on the instrumental if we could 
identify it; so he hums 
and waits for the careful 
rendering of the hair, the body 
sweet and relaxed , away from him 
as if she was in another part of 
the world. 

In the valleys with the kurds 
or along the streets of Tokyo.