I live in a peninsula of stone,
three sides in air,
I smoke like the daughter of a sultan
and I curse three times with each breath
so weary am I of my body
and this love which keeps it soft as it is,
and this self, ruthless as it is,
I want go up over the rocks
and away from Jerusalem, the heart
of my country, I want to call out
like a hyrax or ibex from the grottos
casting my name down and away
where it won’t ever be seen by the sun,
I will shut it
in a hole cut
in the face of the rock,
sealed in ash-earth,
tamped by hooves, by resolute
silence, the ceaseless winds
that peel away the skin
of this desert time and again all spring.