Ali - Sky ward

Sky WardWesleyan PoetryWesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress 2013 Mohammad Kazim Ali All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed and typeset in Seria Sans by Eric M. Brooks Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. This project is supported in part by a grant fromthe National Endowment for the Arts. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ali, Kazim, 1971 Sky ward / Kazim Ali. 1st ed. cm. (Wesleyan poetry) Poems. (Wesleyan poetry) Poems.

ISBN 978-0-8195-7357-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8195-7358-2 (ebook) I. Title. PS3601.L375S55 2013 811'.6 dc23 2012030229 5 4 3 2 1

Sky Ward Hollow the ear in its lathe dark urge to bind in afterlife the temporal word When the white-leafed arms flew up in prayer I left Father, will the sun always unwing me?How else will I body a window is thrown is throne sewn along the seam of I courage an empty bowl drained or teeming drowned or sown along what seems like sky well came the problem of where to live driving through the gray evening, cold rain on the windows listening to melancholy piano on the radio why cant I look at people when I am speaking to them my touch is an argument for pleasure or pressure mornings I run whipstill and drunk at the bodys rage gorgeous I miss not salvation but bliss I adore discs of green melting snow reveals When the journal of music gave way to the journal of pain the pages curled themselves into fists and wept but will I broken will I undone at the water ask to go deeper a boat dusting linden clears away envy wandering like lilac snow in dunes never the water enter the duskwarm room will I let you wing me will I have leapt skyward there is a dream past all unsleeping a fire turned friend and held if we are wedded how does the wind go through me carving monoliths and caves valley conversant in streaks of light my tongue disappear into dusks many tongues there is no one to write this sadness how hard it is going to be to live without him a lonely gathering a haze a crated shrine air thick and healing itself unraveled collapsed into who would have known the cost of breaking I could have told you with a lurch we are all of a sudden airborne prepare to open the leaves not a canticle of wind but reverie or revelation the black square perhaps meaning a dissolving of the body into the ground though isnt this what you were promised and crave here on the frightened bluff naked in the moonlight with a view of the foundry spitting up flames and liquid stone everything we love has been lost we are in a wilderness you will get told bell astral buoy hurricane eye night soaking the foothills in lambent downpour a storm front approaching with the gentlest touch never care atlas let the cold in from every corner something has recessed you have noticed this before of course the rain has not yet fallen but still fiery felt on the skin why say out the beachs syllables dark recess you climbed dare you say salvation what can it mean to the unmoment saved it works to fold into a thousand flying cranes one moment we came to an empty house in the country and wondered who lived there the next moment we were a wild boat refusing to return to harbor even at the storms violent height glass you remember the other life: rain, the beach, his breath hot on your neck what are we if not lost in pools of blame sunlight yield the harshest corner where the last words still stray what you want most is to hold breath in you Now to praise utterly unceasing now to shadow and learn Flickering pulse last chapter sent Never to touch be shorn Full hour spent spelling my house by web to thread air blue By cover of night tree to tree strung any place through Seen clear sun cold lake soul found any place home Now done under woven to spill Blue night lake foal Your son turns restive in his sleep Whispered away by morning to dusk Verses bloom along his wrists and throat In bright sentences his name is cut Five times a day he cries out His voice snuffed in flowery wells He knows in his heart none can take you truly in Save the house that unhomed you In the acres of garden before an empty house an amnesiac prince collects broken branches, prunes the fruit trees, plucks weeds from the rock bed. He speaks a broken language of beach and Broadway and on the way to shore gets lost and finds himself in a cemetery at sunset, pink light on the stones. He cannot read the inscriptions but kneels down at a cenotaph anyhow and recites the only prayers he can remember.

Why, when we wanted to speak to nothing but water, is he singing verses down into the stone hard earth in a town he has never belonged to, lost on his way to the shore? If only he would learn to read the book of the sky, he would see the birds circling lazily around hot currents, which could only mean a large body of water is near. The words are hollow in his mouth and he doesnt know what he believes anyhow, whether bodies will again rise or if the aerial rumors of the gulls will lead him to the sea or if the numb tombstone in his mouth might indeed speak. His scripture comes out sideways and his mispronunciation of the most sacred of syllables makes him always friendless. Its nearly a party trick the way he opens his mouth and butterflies pour out, closes it again and the clock chimes, reminding him of being a young boy, coming home to an empty house, sure that he had been forgotten, that everyone had gone to the beach without him. Sure that he would always be forgotten, that he would lie down in his grave and no ghost would come to fetch him or explain god or what was supposed to happen next. That the grave would fill with dirt and he would rise on the boat of his body.

That no one would recite sacred chapters for him, that he wouldnt know how to take the rudder, that the sea was too far. The boat now coming apart, his voice dwindling, hard as stone. Finally he sees a bird winging down calling, Find-me, find-me! But he doesnt understand words, only sound, the shape of words, the tune to which they are sung. All the sacred verses in the world are like birds wheeling in the sky, who knows where they go.

Little by little I strife I come by holding dark felt aloft Outsmarting winters final blue scene I see the outline of invisible water See me winter Raise me felt and snow Why agree to this awful treaty To share the fate of fire and flesh Released from stillness by a single touch For barely one moment being able to think I Through stone or muck we run as if on fire Fingers reaching to save all the others No return home but an eternity of transformation Everyone crying out not-itnot-it Ashamed and almost withering when the winged god flew from my throat I wanted to kill him for wanting him begged to be reborn as a brute or beast but it was me who wanted to be killed like a king, my uncertain body chained to the rocks promising to lie still, to be destroyed, wanting only to kiss the hands of my winged assassin I would break any promise to be so daily devoured, eternally delivered Next page