I Received a Bitter Email from a Good-Hearted Man

So twenty years of friendship
ended in a small gesture
like a door sliding shut,
and I carried my feeling
to the roof, with its clear view
of Gamru, villagers strolling by,
men with their cigarettes,
women with bags of dirt
on their heads, a few thin dogs.
It was a sick, empty feeling,
like a film of ash on the skin.
And general, too, the feeling
—in the air, in the spectral smoke.
Not for me alone. I circled
the roof, but slowly, slowly,
like Issa’s snail. I spoke aloud
to the green parrots in a near tree
about my friend. I told them
how he let me sleep on his couch
so many nights, and read me
his poems until the wee hours,
poems that made me feel
like part of a tribe. I told them
I hoped he’d be all right,
more than all right, without my help,
which he’s always had till now.
A butterfly cut a jagged line
in the air and I said to the parrots
that for me this is enough,
all of this. And as I spoke it
I believed it. I inhaled, in a deep breath,
the farm and wide roof and the sky
and almost threw up, the melancholy
so sharp. How blessed I was,
it didn’t seem real, like a gardener
who keeps finding seeds
in the creases of his clothes,
and pressed against his skin.
As if I knew, more than any god,
how to live. Suddenly the parrots
darted to the opposite hill,
making a green ladder in the air,
leaving behind a sweet afterimage
which I shut my eyes
to see a moment longer.