And when on the streets of this town you see skulls,
lifeless with age, you’ll know how long this secret
has been going on. You’ll always know the meaning
of it, after you hear the howling of their thoughts.
And in the bowl of their scalps you will touch bulbs
of gold lilies with your fingertips, of garlic and onions,
of all alliums of life, and Dutch hyacinths, and tulips
which once grew into luxuriant curls upon their heads.
To emulate death, men have been making a collection
of faceless stamps in a folder fat with womanhood.
Can you see where the spade went in, like a scalpel
after a lobotomy? Touch now the inside of the dish
and in braille read the shrapnel each of them tells,
hours recited with the sound of tongues of the world.
Let calabashes pour the love of mothers. Their gardens
can only yearn for you to leave with truth inside you;
because when the air is right, and the time is ripe,
since life is engraved at the centre of their wombs,
you will know that dying is not the practice of women.