Strobe (or: Anatta 2)
“This world is strobing,
as is the body,
as is the mind:
always arising, always
passing away.”
You say that’s the way of things
—strobing, strobing—
and that death and birth
are always only
here and now.
But sight is dull,
and all things
seem steady,
so firm so solid
I fear
I’ll break myself against them.
“So break, friend, break,
and learn to see the way of things.”
Copyright © 2016 by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. This poem was first printed in Life and Legends: Journal of International Literature. July 1, 2016. Used with the permission of the author.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Kareem James Abu-Zeid is the translator of No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems 2014 – 2024 by Najwan Darwish (Yale Margellos, 2024). The recipient of awards, fellowships, honors, and residencies from PEN America, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry magazine, the Fulbright Program, the Lannan Foundation, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, he lives outside of Santa Fe.