Woman in Kuala Lumpur

      Jet-lagged, I arrived a day early and took a tour:

      the Batu Caves, a pewter factory, a batik shop,

      a rubber tree plantation, a bug shop.

      Newly dead bugs dried and dipped in acetate,

      glued to pins for lapels or shaped into objects

      westerners would buy. It was foul.

      Burned bugs and the cloy of acetate.

      I got back on the bus.

      The driver left me at a taxi stand. “Easy here,”

      he said. “Easy.” Rush hour, a long line.

      I was in no hurry, people seemed nice,

      business suits, valises, shopping bags.

      I listened to conversations I couldn’t understand,

      day-chatter tones you’d find anywhere.

      The eaters, the readers, the blank looking-ahead

      faces, adolescents with electronic toys. At last,

      at the front of the line, I said “Ampang Puteri,”

      the hospital near my hotel. “The Garden,” I said,

      my hand on the door handle. The driver shook

      his head. “Nuh,” he said and looked beyond me.

      This happened a third time.

      To the woman next in line, Muslim I think—

      her long everyday dress of flowers, a swath

      of folded silk from shoulder to waist: “Good luck,”

      I said and meant it, and saw beyond her in the crowd

      two policemen in military garb, gold braid

      and epaulets. I hoped they spoke enough

      English to help me out. Or I’d find a phone,

      call the hotel.

      I heard her voice then, just a sound, no word

      I understood. She was on the backseat

      of the taxi, her hand moving in that universal

      gesture summoning me. It was all gesture,

      and tone, something in her voice,

      and the meeting of eyes.

      We had no language between us.

      I went with her in the taxi through the smog and blare

      of late afternoon traffic: motorcycle rev, the guttural

      diesel and brake of stop-and-go trucks. My hotel not far,

      a drop-off, I figured, on the way to her own destination.

      Maybe out of the way entirely. I’ll never know.

      I paid the driver what he said and some extra odd coins.

      The woman—I could see now she was old

      and beautiful, deep lines in her face, as though

      she’d earned them—had slid over the seat to where

      I’d just sat. As the car pulled off, we both

      opened our hands on the window between us,

      all the fingers and thumbs matching up.

      I who have had faith in language, what the sentence

      can say, one human to another—it’s clumsy,

      the telling of this story which should be a song

      without words, oboe and strings perhaps,

      a ballet of gesture, grace of the body itself,

      a language I don’t know but desire,

      without the heat and noise of words.