Imagine a country partitioned    divorced from its stones
stained an unearthly red
dark-veined threads of memory seep onto the map
of mismatched histories
new indices of separation

I cross continents
inhabit heartless landscapes    to escape the ache of exile
a persistent dead-weight
like stones in my shoe
stubbornly kept there so as not to forget
the Other Place

the Otherwhere    full of watchful ghosts now
and I am one too
an eager shadow
seeking not revenge but the right of return
as ancestors do

Ashes to ashes    and dust and earth
to stone again

But tell me, is this the same country

What do the stones say
What do the bones say