The Gods of the Age
When they first
glimpsed Creation, it was only
half-lit.
Half-lit,
as in, only half-clear—
that night, they discerned
and imagined.
In the mind’s waters,
a blurring, a refraction.
There, we were brimming,
we were multitudes,
but they saw our darkness
and named us Dark.
Copyright © 2018 by Adeeba Shahid Talukder. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 21, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The phrase half-lit, or neem tareek in Urdu, comes from Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem ‘We who were murdered in the half-lit lanes.’ Faiz wrote this poem as an act of political resistance against an oppressive regime, and in this poem, one of the things I try to do is to explore the psychology of oppression. I think a lot about the way those who hold power have the ability to turn narratives their way, to occlude the mirror of the collective consciousness or to clear it, to define us as they wish. Whether they are myopic, or choose to turn the other way, one fact is clear: they are not seeing us.”
—Adeeba Shahid Taluker
Adeeba Shahid Talukder
