"The master of wood carvers "

The only one who never fled 
and never once thought of moving away 
except for an engraving from the map of his heart 
and whenever the village shrank 
his dwelling tightened until in the end 
here, under this slanted ceiling at the staircase entrance
he takes advantage of the plane’s absence between two bombings
to search the rubble for a Spanish chisel
that a woman impressed by his last exhibition had gifted him 
about the hybrid veins of wood in Madrid
" and why should I leave??
There is nothing left for me to grieve over
and the wood has become tombstones
on the damaged pieces people write 
with lime residue 
the names of their deceased
and I have fled from rickety closets and from swollen doors like corpses my signature
I am the king of wood carvers"
The sun sets 
he folds his thin belly over his arms
and the fingers of his two hands freeze that were
through famines stretched out 
like for the neighbors, for the bird
looking out not knowing from where
he unbinds the dry strands of rheum from his eyes
and does not turn back, since he will surely not greet the morning
except a cat sleeping between his legs
and although he knows that not even the scent remains in him
he opens, once again, the tobacco pouch 
and silently inhales a time that surprised his lungs with this dry cough, like one who breathed dust from his grave
he told no one about his burial will
but a shot of burning gunpowder turned it
to ashes in a bundle gently thrown under a fig tree 
on whose trunk he had carved the first two letters of his name, a nun without a dot and a waw that twisted its tail around the trunk until it touched the hollow of the rope of his childhood swing