Roger Humes

 

You built your house
          (for Mahmoud Darwish)

 

You built your house
on land borrowed from time,                              
salt and earth mixed with tears
to form the mortar, walls erected
from posted letters of longing,
the roof a sky full of recollections
recorded during a lifetime of travel.

 

When asked for your address
you handed them a business card:
The House of the Absent
The Street between Love and Death
A Stranger’s Night Asking Who am I?

 

There is no history in poetry, merely
the context of when the moment
gave forth to your lines recounting
how you finally arrived home.