Agitated Air [by one bird late chanting]
(by one bird
late chanting)
(if bird is knowing
not naming)
(how lovers)
(first thing
were fastening)
(then nothing)
(if hell is watching
their fading)
(if night is naming
not finding)
(if wind is
their breathing)
(is something)
(if night is
but cloaking)
(world never
not shining)
(if river is not
stopping
crying not crossing)
(if weather)
(if lightning is heart
beating faster)
(if raining is not
stopping
wanting)
(what’s missing)
(if you are forever
comparing)
(a person to trees)
(try reversing)
(if you)
(were like me)
(if branching to bodies)
(flowers)
(feeling)
From Agitated Air: Poems After Ibn Arabi (Tenement Press, 2022) by Yasmine Seale and Robin Moger. Copyright © 2022 by Yasmine Seale and Robin Moger. Used with the permission of the authors.
Yasmine Seale
Yasmine Seale, a writer, translator, printmaker, and artist, was born in London in 1989.
Among Seale’s translations from Arabic are Something Evergreen Called Life (Action Books, 2022), a collection of poems by the Sudanese writer and activist Rania Mamoun, and The Annotated Arabian Nights (W. W. Norton, 2021), described by The New Yorker as “an electric new translation.” Seale is the coauthor of Agitated Air (Tenement Press, 2022), a collaboration with the translator Robin Moger, responding to the work of the poet and metaphysician Ibn Arabi.