Farhang

The mountains were gold first or golden

And when the wind came the mountains

Gave their gold or golden to all below.  And some were sad

And some wished for it to go away and some

Smiled as it settled upon the houses and schools,

Mosques and churches.  Windows, cars, children

And goats, were all gold, and when it settled around the statue

Of Mam and Zin—their embrace turned gold, their blood turned gold

And finally their bodies, golden, were left to settle, alone.

In dust, in sunlit burnt sand, their embrace and their

Wishes longed for it all to grow.  "Can you feel it my love,

The sand is carving us closer and closer, don't breathe,

For once don't breathe."  Farhang inhaled their dust

and returned home to whisper it into his new fingers.

But sometimes when he is sleeping and dreaming

of someone to hold he sighs a wedding ring,

earrings and a necklace —a dress with gold lace upon it 

was once lost while drowsing on a couch.  He has lost these moments—

but returns to their embrace again and again—

to inhale the wind and sand sculpting a love, dead and golden.

Patrick Woodcock is the author of seven books of poetry.  His last book Always Die Before Your Mother (ECW Press, 2009) reached the number one position on the Globe and Mail's poetry bestseller list and was shortlisted for Canada ReLit award for poetry.  After two years in the Kurdish North of Iraq, Woodcock has returned to Canada to complete his new book of poetry, Echo Gods and Silent Mountains which is set to be published by ECW Press in the Spring of 2012.  Woodcock was also the poetry editor for The Literary Review of Canada.  His poetry has been translated and published in eleven languages.