The Far Mosque by Kazim Ali Page B

take.

    Where will you now journey.

    For a day.

    Sounds of water.

    You will sometime soon say:
I am coming home now.

    And not mean it.

    What in your life have you meant.

    A little inn perched in the hills above Calvi.

    The cloud-sheathed cold.

    Cold falling into the steep streets of the city.

    You are still there.

    Tissue-clouded moon swells above the blue-black.

    A terse, obscene, spattering of stars.

    A blue stone, fastened with a leather strap, cold against your chest.

    Closing your eyes at the beach, listening to the rocks being piled, softly clacking against one another.

    Another music for you.

    Will you fall?

    The wind presses against the portholes.

    They rattle slightly in the night.

    Rolling sound of rain pouring into the sea.

    Wreaking the sound against sleep.

    Waking with the light, the drunken year sinking.

    3

Rain

    With thick strokes of ink the sky fills with rain.
    Pretending to run for cover but secretly praying for more rain.

    Over the echo of the water, I hear a voice saying my name.
    No one in the city moves under the quick sightless rain.

    The pages of my notebook soak, then curl. I’ve written:
    â€œYogis opened their mouths for hours to drink the rain.”

    The sky is a bowl of dark water, rinsing your face.
    The window trembles; liquid glass could shatter into rain.

    I am a dark bowl, waiting to be filled.
    If I open my mouth now, I could drown in the rain.

    I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me.
    The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain.

The City

    First the smell of wet earth.

    Then fresh bread baking.

    Great stone lions.
    An obelisk.

    An abandoned umbrella, broken by wind.

    Each leaf on the drying pavement perfectly circled in rain.

    This is where kings lie down.

    This is where the wounded come to.

Event

    Eight white birds, wings tipped with black, flying away. Snow stretches below from dark to darkness.

    This is the image of the soul leaving
, says Catherine.
I sent this postcard to my friends to announce the death of my sister.

    Dusty blue above the pyramid of Saqqara. The kingdom ends here and the desert begins.

    Near a carved doorway, a guard lurks. For five pounds he lets me go down into the cold inner tombs.

    There, the ancient etchings have been defaced by hieroglyphic graffiti. “First dynasty ruffians,” the guard explains, in pieces.

    The roof is missing from the temple at the gate. Only the pillars attest to it.

    There is a consonant in the middle of my Arabic name that my tongue cannot manage.

    I mispronounce myself.

    In a room full of shards at the museum, realizing the Egyptian artists
practiced.
Over and over again: a human figure from the side. Two feet evenly placed.

    No attempt at approaching or retreating figures.

    I love this painting of the cathedral by Van Gogh
, says Catherine.
There is no door, no way to get in.

The River’s Address

    Slow in the evening light through tree-covered streets
    sounds develop unenvelopable—

    Troubadour, river-citizen, can you navigate the sound’s course
    to my far shore’s ecstasy?

    Be gray here, be broken and strafed, fully roused and drawn here,
    like a compass needle, find yourself bound and unintelligible.

    You followed the shrift north from the city into the mountains,
    to the place you eddy, churn, spell out the moon’s tidal courses.

    River-chaser, compass-worn, here the source spills to the sea,
    and here the waters wend from the sea back to the source.

    Unsire yourself—instead of street-maps and sounding depths
    trace your name, trace the trees, trace the night into your mind.

    Close your eyes and listen to the sound—try to remember—
    or try to forget—here is the place you could turn and return.

Precipice

    We came to the next part together and eager,
    trying on the accretion of coats,

    your rough cheek against mine.
    Cauldron eyes, you’re striking, ferrous, uncurdling me.

    All points of