and then our exile

And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? (Matthew 7:3)

my wings are unseen
my ears resound
when i walk among the trees
or beneath the tombstones (Neruda)

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey
Star-inwrought! (Shelley)

At about seven thirty last night, i was walking through light raindrops to catch the bus from Halbuni home. At eight-oh-five, i was walking notebooks in hand slightly late for my Arabic class, it had stopped sprinkling and was for overcast quiet, dark clouds over dark sky and bright lights over dark shadows. At ten forty, i was walking home, it had started again, gentle but cold. At three fifteen this morning i left Kh's house, to walk home instead of taking a bus: over half an hour alone on deserted streets, sporadic chori of the rush through standing water--bus or taxi or joyriding youth. Wide streets, past the State Planning Commission, the Ibn Nafees hospital, lit buildings behind sleeping windows, and steady step through the images of space. And then the clouds parted in earnest, water misting my shoulders through the jacket, feeling the heave and fall of a sleeping city: the deep blue of the new sky became, as i turned 'round Mount Qasiyun, the transluscent cityglow, and occasional ba:ckerei's opened, two internet cafe's, regular kishks (kiosks). To MuhyidDin as the minarets of this extrapolis were suddenly given voice, the water of the sky harder now, colder, more insistent, the hints of dawn. An age later: homeward, and the regularity of drops drenching everything, pouring off all, my head dripping onto the nape of my neck and my jacket onto the floor, shoulders shivering as sandles and socks having been saturated several times.

Walking through rain. Life and i become "Comfortable" with JM*yer extended over to the whole world.

And Eliot underestimated coffee spoons.