Vida Kazemi: Erosion


How shall I put it in words
when words recede and disappear
like dreams, rendering fruitless
my efforts?

You think I look the same, but
I have changed in ways
invisible from where you stand.
My brain has dried
hardened into a rock
through gradual sedimentation.
I am now part of a seawall.

Did you know that I could recite
some twenty or thirty Hafiz
poems by heart? Now
some memories are fossilized,
some etched like hieroglyphs,
others grown faint, with
the smashing of the tide.

You may not want to know
how familiar streets can seem
foreign, my daily losses,
not just of keys.

You might tell me
I have the same problem.
It happens to everyone with age.
give an example of your own,
as if our paths were one.
The land between us divides.
Fog rises and blurs my view.

I want to tell you
this rock is mostly bare.
Still – between the jagged points,
grow sea grapes
grow ferns,
forming a sea garden
on a seawall.

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