Plundered Hearts by J.D. McClatchy

look up, giving in,
    Unknowing all, whose pain has just begun.
HEADS
    As if layered in a wedge of honey cake,
        The aromas of split persimmon,
                   Mint, cat spray, and cardamom
        All mingle with the bitter coffee
                   On this morning’s scuffed brass tray
    Brought into the shop by a cripple with wings.
    The match for two Marlboros also now strikes
        The end to one loud bit of holy
                   (“Faith” in Arabic is “
din
”)
        Bargaining at the end of the street.
                   Peels of old light lie scattered
    Outside. Dogs barking. Market day in the souk.
    Muhammad deals in goat heads. His rival’s shop
        Is beef, swags of lung and counters heaped
                   With livers like paving stones,
        A child-high pile of squat, outsize shins
                   And marbleized, harelipped hearts—
    Food the rich man eats to settle his conscience.
    And
there are flies next door, and a hose to wash
        Dung out of the cow guts … which reminds
                   Muhammad of his brother
        Who left to become headwaiter at
                   Rasputin’s Piano-Bar.
    Both his grandfathers, his father too, had worked
    In this tiled hollow lit by one bare bulb.
        Stuck in the mirror are their postcards
                   Of the Kaaba, the silk-veiled,
        Quartz-veined sky-stone, Islam’s one closed eye.
                   Muhammad hasn’t made his
    Required pilgrimage. He went west instead,
    The hajj to California, but came up six
        Credits shy at Fresno State. (Shy too
                   Of the girlfriend who’d wanted
        To marry “for good,” not a green card.)
                   So he’s back in the shop now,
    Next to a copper tub of boiling water.
    He takes another head by the ear and dips
        It
—eight, nine, ten—
into the kettle,
                   Then quickly starts to shave it
        With a bone-handled wartime Gillette.
                   The black matted shag falls in
    Patches to the floor and floats toward the clogged drain.
    One after another, the heads are stacked up
        Behind, like odd-lot, disassembled
                   Plastic replicas of goats.
        Though their lips are hardened now, the teeth
                   Of some can be seen—perfect!
    But Muhammad hacks the jaws off anyway,
    And the skulls with their nubbly horns and ears.
        What’s left is meant for his faithful poor,
                   For their daily meager stew.
        He lines up six on a shelf out front.
                   (As if all turned inside out,
    The heads, no longer heads exactly, strangely
    Bring to mind relief maps of the “occupied
        Territories.” Born on the wrong side
                   Of a new border, he’s made
        To carry his alien’s ID,
                   Its sullen headshot labeled
    In the two warring tongues.) Goat heads feel them all,
    The refugee, the single man, and his dog—
        Their delicacy. Cartilage knobs.
                   Fat sacs. The small cache of flesh.
        The eyeballs staring out at nothing
                   In all directions. The tongue
    Lolling up, as if with something more to say.
    Jerusalem, November 1987
AN ESSAY ON FRIENDSHIP
    Friendship is love without wings.
    — FRENCH PROVERB
I.
    Cloud swells. Ocean chop. Exhaustion’s
    Black-and-white. The drone at last picked up
    By floodlights a mile above Le Bourget.
    Bravado touches down. And surging past
    Police toward their hero’s spitfire engine,
    His cockpit now become the moment’s mirror,
    The crowd from inside dissolves to flashbulbs.
    Goggles, then gloves, impatiently pulled off,
    He climbs down