Kaveh Akbar Quotes

I have been so careless with the words I already have.

I don't remember how to say home
in my first language, or lonely, or light.

I remember only
delam barat tang shodeh, I miss you,

and shab bekheir, goodnight.

How is school going, Kaveh-joon?
Delam barat tang shodeh.

Are you still drinking?
Shab bekheir.

For so long every step I've taken
has been from one tongue to another.

I've given this coldness many names thinking if it had a name it would have a solution thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs I carried the coldness like a diamond for years holding it close near as blood until one day I woke and it was fully inside me both of us ruined and unrecognizable two coins on a train track the train crushed into one.

my body follows me around asking
for things. I try to think louder, try
to be brilliant, wildly brilliant.

I'm becoming more a vessel of memories than a person it's a myth /
that love lives in the heart it lives in the throat we push it out /
when we speak when we gasp we take a little for ourselves /

in books love can be war-ending a soldier drops his sword /
to lie forking oysters into his enemy's mouth in life we hold love up to the light /
to marvel at its impotence

I am less horrible than I could be
I've never set a house on fire
never thrown a firstborn off a bridge
still my whole life I answered every cry for help with a pour
with a turning away
I've given this coldness many names
thinking if it had a name it would have a solution
thinking if I called a wolf a wolf I might dull its fangs

envy is the only deadly sin that's no fun for the sinner

Is there a vocabulary for this - one to make dailiness amplify and not diminish wonder?