Unnameable

In Pashto, to water sleep:

"da stargo tora"
(the black of my eyes)

as tenebrous as the earth of her name
left for dead so long, it had assumed

fecundity. look, this is a good world if you
can winnow the linger of its indifference

to hold anything is prelude to extinction
i wish i could exercise a softness as aphasic

as the dream of myself before i manifested
a constant body. my grandmother remains

a timeless crescent, the shadow of a junglee
badam tree carving up a bare roof by the mere

bent of its body. a body blackened to kin the eye
the mind memorizes a river as light’s heartbreak

to remember that — an arid mouth is a corrupt
temple. mirror, sacerdotal. a quelled raga—

a room where hours only speak in a continuous tense
where imagination has yet to learn the invention of loss