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ALMITRA DAVID<br />
Write that my father<br />
taught me to read the river,<br />
to see what passes and passes,<br />
yet how could I know<br />
the white form suddenly before me,<br />
wavering on the water?<br />
We are coming to the heart of it:<br />
how you changed before you fled,<br />
how you did not recognize<br />
your reflection as you ran,<br />
how your eyes looked back at you<br />
from a face not human.<br />
2<br />
If you return<br />
they will be there,<br />
the mothers in the plaza,<br />
the pictures of the vanished,<br />
the circling, the wheel of prayer.<br />
Or stay, they are here<br />
on the walls of New York,<br />
the pictures of the vanished,<br />
the circling, the wheel of prayer.<br />
Towers have crumbled<br />
more times than your calendars tell,<br />
beyond number your<br />
sons and daughters,<br />
yet you examine the earth<br />
as though that maze<br />
of scratches in the dirt<br />
were a map, a marker for<br />
the beginning of madness.<br />
13 <strong>Beloit</strong> <strong>Poetry</strong> <strong>Journal</strong> Fall 2002
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