Via Dolorosa
Traci Brimhall

We have been telling the story wrong all along,
how a king took Philomela's tongue after he had taken
her body, and how the gods turned her into a nightingale（夜莺）

so she could tell the night of her grief. Even now the streets
wait for her lamentation（悲叹） —strays minister to bones abandoned
on a stoop, a man sleeps on the ghosts of yesterday's heat,

pigeons rest on top of the church and will not stir until
they hear music below them. Inside, a woman warms up
the organ and sings Via Dolorosa about a Messiah

who wanted to save everyone from the wages of pleasure.
But how can I keep a man's fingers from my mouth?
How can I resist bare trees dervishing（苦行僧） on the sidewalk?

A woman outside the train station asks, Is there a city
underneath this city? I say, Let me tell you a story,
and tell her that after Longfellow put out the fire

in his wife's dress, after he buried her, after his burns
turned to soft pink skin, he translated the Inferno（阴间，地域） .
There is a place deep in the earth for the ravished

and ruined where everyone is transformed by suffering.
And the truth is that Philomela originally became
a sparrow stuttering in the laurels（月桂树） , but the story

changed with the telling. Someone wanted to give her
mercy, a song. Now the truth is a red stain on her breast.
Now truth is the pulse where her tongue used to be.