He doesn’t talk much about his life in Sri Lanka before the war, only after, as if in 1983 when everything ended for some Sri Lankan Tamils is when his life begins.

When I find out that Galway Kinnell has passed away, I will read The Book of Nightmares in a library, tears coating my face like sweat.

At the top of the pantheon of spirits in Burma are the Thirty-Seven Nats. Twirling on earth, in pink lace and a shimmering shawl, is their 74-year-old medium, U Nan Win.

As the song reaches its frenzy—“Lord, I can’t change”—we are driving home with the windows down, pummelling the dashboard like a drum. My hair is flying across my face, and I can smell his cologne.

I see these signs, but I also see alligators and flamingos and cypress knees and Spanish moss, dolphins and palm fronds and pine cones the size of pumpkins.

“The last chapter is the most difficult to finish in a revolution, as in a novel,” writes Khaled Khalifa from war-torn Syria.

Everyone is hoping that the just declared new country will be lucky, that the rioting and murdering will not break out as predicted by the expat at our bar the night before.

Soon it was all they could do to keep these children from singeing the draperies or shattering the glass windowpanes with a single touch.

During this time the weather changed and the voice on the radio brought uneasy news about barricades, policemen, and tear gas in the city.

Six feet tall and arms like bundled wire. He go strutting the length of the house.