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Afghanistan
From #4 of Liebermann's Six Songs on Poems of Raymond Carver, Opus 80

The sad music of roads lined with larches
The forest in the distances resting under snow.
The Khyber Pass,
Alexander the Great,
History, and lapis lazuli.
No books, no pictures,
no knick-nacks please me.
But She pleases me, and lapis lazuli.
That blue stone she wears on her dear finger,
that pleases me exceedingly.
The bucket clatters into the well
and brings up water with a sweet taste to it.
The toe-path along the river.
The foot-path through the grove of almonds.
My love Goes everywhere in her sandals.
And wears lapis lazuli on her finger.

Dan
--
"Afghanistan" was first printed in Paris Review (Flushing, NY, Fall 1984); then as a broadside "to honor RC (Raymond Carver) on his induction into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters" on May 18, 1988 (Concord, NH: William B. Ewert, 1988); and then published in the compilation, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (New York, NY: Random House, 1985).