I I recognize my father's wooden skin The sun in the west lights up his bald bones I see his face and then his broken pair of shoes His voice comes through, an empty sleeve. Birds merge with the blue like thin strokes. Each man is an unfinished fiction And I'm the last survivor of what was a family; They left in a caravan, none saw them Slip through the two hands. The dial spreads on the roof Alarms put alarms to sleep Led by invisible mules I take a path across The mountains, my alchemies trailing behind Like leather-bound nightmares; There isn't a lost city in sight, the map I had Preserved drifts apart like the continents it showed. II My shadow falls on the sun and the sun Cannot reach my shadow; near the central home Of nomad and lean horse I pick up A wheel, a migratory arrow, a numeral. The seed is still firm. Dreams Pitch their tents along the rim. I climb Sugar Mountain My mother is walking into the horizon Fire breaks out in the nests Trees laden with the remnants of squirrels Turn into scarecrows The seed sends down another merciless root; My alembic distills these fairytales Acids, riddles, the danger in flowers I must never touch pollen or look Into a watchmaker's shop at twilight. III My journey has been this anchor The off-white cliff a sail Fowl and dragons play near the shores My sea-wrecked ancestors left. I call out to the raven, "My harem, my black rose The clock's slave, keeper of no man's land between us" And the raven, a tear hung above his massive pupil, Covers my long hair with petals. Only once did I twist the monotonous pendulum To enter the rituals at the bottom of twelve seas Unghostlike voices curdled my blood, the colour Of my scorpion changed from scarlet To scarlet; I didn't mean to threaten you Or disturb your peace I know nothing of But you - living in these fables, branches And somehow icebergs - tell me, whose seed I carry.