SANCTUARY

For terrible minutes I searched for the word, like a lost
country; thought of the bird flown into the arms
of the figure my father sketched in a notebook before

he died. This is what matters, he said, grief-struck, unsteady,
grounding himself by holding his pencil up to the light
to measure the distance. A room is a place a story

might begin or end, where doors can open routes
to dreaming. I hear a man’s voice over the radio
proclaiming desperate measures in Calais, in Budapest,

in Sofia, in Zagreb. I cannot imagine it: a train station; 
a wire fence; the overflowing latrine; children playing
on a stony road. The cold distance between there and here.

My pen scratches paper. Words hinged with cries fly off,
come home to roost. I cannot not imagine it.



FIRE

It was because I dreamt it twice it stayed with me:
...