Upon the face of darkness beams my soul—
Nearby, behind the curtains of my sight;
And ’round it weary waves of wonder roll—
Sad seas of color o’er dead seas of light:
Here is no Space, no Time—nor day nor night—
Here is the boundless, undiminished Whole—
Here is my soul.
Here is no love that hides beneath its shoal
The sandix that can redden a sea of years;
Here is no lust that lies to Beauty’s mole
And draws from eyes of flint a flood of tears;
Here is no disenchantment and no fears—
No blasted hopes, no jaunty joy, no dole—
Here is my soul.
Now lost in clay and water; now the Whole
Is lost within me: sea and earth and sky
I dismiss from my presence, as I roll
My lids and lo, the lord of night am I.
Into the airless wilderness I fly;
Here is no vain desire, no galling goal—
Here is my soul.
In Eternity, shod with the hoary noul
Of deathless Death—in dim and shimmering shades
Of soilless vales that bosom and cajole
The crystal flowers dropping from cloud-cascades;
Here in the grove of myriad colonnades
Of jet and pearl and amber I now stroll—
Here is my soul.
From Myrtle and Myrrh (The Gorham Press, 1905) by Ameen Rihani. This poem is in the public domain.
haunted by
wholeness—
bright debris sibilant
beneath skin tug-of-warring
with gravity, we
harvest shine
from the caves of
mouths & crevices
of eyes incandescent
as we remember
the most massive
flares among us,
detonate inside
each other to hold
tiny supernovae
in our arms. Crushed
bodies craving fusion
keep us brimming
with enough energy
to pass on,
keep us lit & lying
to ourselves about
the eventual & sudden
ways we black hole—
it already happened, it’s happening
anyway, to happen soon,
scattering all that we think
matters so much now
for another radiant giant to gather
then fling across galaxies
again—reconstituted
& scorched clean,
new turmoil begging
from the inside out
to burn.
From Starshine & Clay (Four Way Books, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Kamilah Aisha Moon. Used with the permission of Four Way Books.
two arms in air,
in dance, after catastrophe.
the body the universe the body
the fabric held at two points:
i am lamb. i am shepherd.
a star waits.
the stars are a map in the noon of it all.
a letter, a relic from a gone civilization.
a ن holds the tail of the snake.
a ن holds a star in its ark.
a ن is a prayer before Time.
hearsay: the whale swallowed the sun.
there, an eclipse, the sun’s wispy corona.
ن
hearsay: the whale spit it out.
returned our sun to us, this time.
a small circle silences.
a set of small teeth doubles.
this, the machine,
my grandmother’s language,
gifted her by holy fish,
forbidden her by man.
in a dream, she and i,
two pisces fish, whispering friends
in the noon of it all.
a ن today
on my brother’s door.
a ن between my legs.
a ن on my neighbor’s cheek.
you, you hold the broken in me.
you, you hold the setting sun.
you, you escape
the mouth of death.
reconstituted
in the noon
of the universe.
single seed. bijou in float.
there, there waits the ark.
ن
A note on this poem, an invitation:
Oh noon, the letter ن, intoning the -n- sound, pronounced noon.
A Semitic letter, really, in Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and through some
starcrossed lineage, it has a cousin in Sanskrit, maybe even the same DNA.
Some say the letter got its shape from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a snake.
Some say the snake morphed into a whale, a fish, a dolphin. In the Qur’an,
the Surah of The Pen begins by saying that the ن and the pen are in the act of
writing, as if the ن were capable of script, were it not script itself. Were it not
a snake, a whale, a palimpsest. What writes us as we write it. In Arabic class,
Professor Hani drew a ن on the board and asked us what it looked like.
He wanted us to say a cup. We saw an ark instead, a boat. And true,
the ancients believed it might be a cup. And true, the scholars
believe it to be a boat, holding a seed, the seed of the universe,
awaiting rebirth after apocalypse. Birth, as in pregnant
womb, though this isn’t in the scholarly texts.
Some liken it to a setting sun.
And Jonah, prophet who found God in the whale.
The floating diacritical dot, Jonah escaping death.
A noon as the beginning and end of existence.
These days, in Iraq, in Syria, elsewhere
being ravaged by death squads,
a symbol is painted on people’s doors.
ن
for Nazarene.
For anyone who does not submit to tyranny.
There, there waits the ark.
Copyright © 2021 by Kamelya Omayma Youssef. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 15, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
It felt familiar, your mouth moving
up my side like a gale warning. My
arm calico—mammatus clouds—
blood brought to the surface.
Now I understand my childhood
home. Releasing shingle after shingle
into the brutal air. Our front door
torn and flat in the yard. Violent
gusts whipping through the marshes—
the back of your hand.
Of what I have unlearned
this was the hardest.
One sandpiper singing
still, desire does not
have to leave you
ruined.
Copyright © 2022 by Meghann Plunkett. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 4, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs of having
inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright ©1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.