Afternoon in Andalusia
But why wouldn’t geometry equal divinity
1000 + 1 + 1 + 1 What is faith
but trust in one & infinity Once
in Granada I studied a wall of polygons
or was it stars or bees or for a second a flash
of gladiolas in a field until I could see
a galaxy planets spinning spokes on a wheel
clocks or buttons vines blooming a tornado
from a future century garden of ellipses
my lover’s cornea alight each morning
God so far away & right in front of me
Copyright © 2022 by Sahar Romani. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 27, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
“As much as this poem remembers a time when I visited the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, it also meditates on the power of geometric design in Islamic art and architecture. What is the relationship between squares, triangles, hexagons, and the sacred? I wrote this poem in search of an answer, plunging into memory of the hypnotic tilework I once encountered in the interior façades and ceilings of the Alhambra. While writing, I began to see how repetitive, interlocking geometric patterns, which invoke singularity and multiplicity, can render the cosmos, and perhaps, reveal a glimmer of the mundane and the divine all at once.”
—Sahar Romani
Sahar Romani
Sahar Romani, daughter of Indian Muslim immigrants, is the recipient of fellowships from Poets House, New York University’s Creative Writing Program, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.