Plumb line. For the longest time
I heard it as plum line.
I adore a perfect fruit its flawless groove
revealing division, remaining one.
Your earth is lead
that poisons the stream of my memory.
Your phosphorus plumbs me to the bone.
I know how it came to this. How did it?
More than words, you speak in silences
that amplify white spaces
in which white is not water.
It smells. I can taste it. And water is life,
closer to life than dirt and stone.
Dirt and stone,
is that what you love most to taste? I spin and raise
my taste and smell into a love like water.
How will I go on living
with orchestras that conduct my thirst?
It’s been done before.
There are precedents, always will be,
and there will be Gaza after the dark times.
There will be gauze. And we will all stand
indicted for not standing against the word
and our studies of the word
that dissect what ceases to be water.
Why do you crave plumbing the depths of dust so?
Dust and ashes, I’m ahead of my time,
my time is only mine when you’re in it
with an open heart.
An open heart has two ears, two eyes.
One set for breath, one for blood. And the dance
between them, grooved
like a plum. I will survive. There is no better song.
My body knows my memory
is my keeper beyond the loss
in which you’re hooked on naming.
Can you be water?
One day you will be
that kind of divine.
Fady Joudah, [...], published in The Yale Review, February 28, 2024.
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