Isfahan

Isfahan

Isfahan

That half-open amber eye fixed on you,
the woman in the kitchen half turning to you —
drowsy tonight, you take in the angles
of chairs, walls, old photos, a painted vase.

There, a heron’s stillness helps it vanish,
wading by a wind-flecked lake.
Outside, car-noise glistening after early rain.
Night’s silence builds its inner ear.

So birds croak from a cracked, green bush,
the mouth’s distortion roars into an amulet,
but nothing distinguishes each memory,
solidified into a white-domed zone:

a set of blocks along a slope, a fossil trace,
kitchen clatter acquires a blinder shape.
Its time is ridged like wind-blown sea.
Suddenly lit up, cat\'s-eyes down a moonless road.