Trick guard

Alone, as I always am, I don't enter through closed doors. My exit calms me, and the moons in the copper nights hang over the gates of Damascus. Damascus is the abyss of waiting and the walls of crystal...
Close to the scent of its women and the urine of its men, close to its last crumbling, I crouch before its gates like a jackal forgotten by loneliness and now overcome by longing for the howling of the wolves. Now Damascus is tearing me apart:
You are the son of echo.
My mother's deceitful voice comes to me from the farthest reaches, the reaches open to the possibilities of a miracle that evaporated from between my mother's naked dresses under the moonlight, and the king's men catch fish and scatter their bullets at flocks of passing birds that fall into the arms of the peasant women spread out in the fields. Wild pigeons, partridges without beaks, without eyes and with only dark wings. The king's men search for empty bullets, for my mother's path and my umbilical cord, and continue hunting, smoking, blasphemy, and ejaculating into the river.
My mother's voice, mixed with the creaking of Damascus's doors that did not open for me, calls me:
Wait seven centuries. I do not enter through closed doors alone, and I'm always alone. It breaks me to leave while the moons of the night cast a coppery glow from the gates of Damascus. Damascus, the abyss of anticipation and the fences of crystalline...

Close to the scent of its women and the urine of its men, close to its final devastations, I collapse before its gates like an abandoned jackal who succumbed to longing for the howling of wolves. Now, Damascus tears me:

"You are the son of echoes."

My mother's deceptive voice reaches me from the farthest distance, the distance open to the possibilities of miracles that evaporated from beneath my disrobed mother's robes under the moonlight. The king's men hunt fish and scatter their bullets among flocks of passing birds, which fall into the arms of scattered peasant women in the fields: wild pigeons, and partridges without beaks, without eyes, with nothing but dark wings. The king's men search for empty bullets, they search for my mother's path and my umbilical cord. They keep hunting, smoking, cursing, and ejaculating into the river waters.

My mother's voice, mixed with the cracking of Damascus's doors that never opened for me, calls out:

"Wait for seven centuries."