AZERBAIJAN

For Linda

There are public baths in Baku,
centuries old.

Even older are the Gobustan petroglyphs,
drawings of humans from 10,000 years
ago.

In "The Mountain of Tongues,"
jabal al-alsun, more than three hundred
languages are spoken.
Languages of the
Talysh, Tats, Lesghis, Avars, and Kurds;
Indo-European, Turkic and Caucasian tongues.
The Azeri Language is spoken

in vast palaces, mountains built of stone,
far from the land of brilliant green grass
and the wild mustard we walked through today,

centuries later,
10,000 miles from Baku

in silence.