After every firefly has vanished into
silence and night, an emptiness remains.
After all the floods to punish the world
a mirrorlike polish sticks around.
Our faces don’t recognize themselves
inside the worried reflection. Only a hill
disturbs us for a moment, moist and swelling
above the mattress edge: the slit of a skirt
that flashes open, rice falling opulent
on wings before the chosen couple’s eyes,
and a young woman, who cannot be said
to have seen this place before, waves her hand.
She invites us as if she had always been here,
resembling the dark green river
that laps against this castle and its fictitious
coat-of-arms, the garden with sandy paths
and a bedroom, where lovers from before
the war breathe in the curtains, waiting
for the stroll to end, waiting with witnesses,
maids and mothers of tired families
waiting to go to bed, waiting on a pair
of continents, waiting for even the dresses
to get to bed. The only one still awake,
I respond to the invitation, let myself
be drawn across the map: what used to live
as a single point is now becoming a line,
stronger from hour to hour and crossing
every border shaded in by others.
Whispers, in your voice: Look, the country
is no longer a huddled bird, it suffers
a little less than it did before.