Classic Poem

For Ann Forsythe Irwin Bourgois

Remembering Ann
Whose beauty began
At the crown of her head
And ran to the deep underneath
Of her feet—
Never aware of her own élan.
Now, half mad with pain,
She crawls through her rooms,
Calling for doctors,
Falling,
Forgetting,
Consumed,
Trepanned.

Ever since the world began—
Star fall
Nightfall
Bomb fall
Downfall …
Read the scan:
Every woman and every man,
Once a flowered Palestine,
Falls blindly toward the Nakba—
Bald catastrophe,
Prescription—
According to the
Plan.