By the Time God Found Us It Was Spring


and the heavenly
doors had left
their frames. We first sent

birds; they came back
blind. They said it was the sun
rebelling. Then: here, tomorrow’s

flesh. So we hugged
the birds until we became
them, imagined doors

and not needing them.



Exile Poems

Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha


Sweet Dreams

FEAR, the most horrible and barbaric fear. It had talons and wings and bore its fangs into each of us. It bled out veins. It was parasitic . . .


What Animals Are Admitted To Paradise

Mountain goats have climbed their way hoof and tail apart to the tallest
peaks and leaped with lockets of an old man’s beard. They say the
goats that make the leap and survive, the ones that make it

across to land on the other cliff, get their shadows get turned into clouds.