greatpoetry | Postcards

I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
Are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
Fractured coke bottles and the smell
Of backed-up drains, too sweet,
Like a mango on the verge
Of rot, which we have also.
The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
And their tracks; birds and elusive.

Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one
Day after the other rolling on;
I move up, it's called
Awake, then down into the uneasy
Nights but never
Forward. The roosters crow
For hours before dawn, and a prodded
Child howls and howls
On the pocked road to school.
In the hold with the baggage
There are two prisoners,
Their heads shaved by bayonets, and ten crates
Of queasy chicks. Each spring
There's race of cripples, from the store
To the church. This is the sort of junk
I carry with me; and a clipping
About democracy from the local paper.

Outside the window
They're building the damn hotel,
Nail by nail, someone's
Crumbling dream. A universe that includes you
Can't be all bad, but
Does it? At this distance
You're a mirage, a glossy image
Fixed in the posture
Of the last time I saw you.
Turn you over, there's the place
For the address. Wish you were
Here. Love comes
In waves like the ocean, a sickness which goes on
And on, a hollow cave
In the head, filling and pounding, a kicked ear.

-Margaret Atwood