My position is this:
The poet is not true to his word
If he doesn’t change the names of things
–Nicanor Parra, “Changes of Names”
Start with your own name. No longer respond
when old friends call you by your given one.
Withhold the new one until weeks later
when shadows crawl out of rain,
and starlings swarm as one, funneling up
into visible, ever-changing patterns,
widening into circles before swerving away
from your part of the sky.
Your new name? Nairobi.
That swerve of birds?
Change murmuration to rumored invitations.
Now call the sky Heroism on synchronized wheels
because rain deserves a special relocation as well,
beginning with the sound it makes,
a long, deep inhalation through the mouth.
Let’s just say it will never be forgotten,
that change of its name, whatever it is, to hers.
Factor in the sound she made when she left,
something on her face, the motion of her hands
as she tried, but failed, to brush it away.
If it was something other than just rain
then you should know how she should be called.
I don’t. So, I can’t tell you what her name is now.
And if you know, please tell me, so I can begin
to remember, as if I could ever forget,
those not-so-long-ago days sewn through each other.
Then tell her mine. My newest one.
That is, if she still wants to know.
