Kaveh Akbar

Regarding loss, I’m afraid

to keep it in the story,

Upon landing, the ground

embraced me sadly, with the gentleness

of someone delivering tragic news to a child.

am not a slow learner I am a quick forgetter

It’s serious business, this living.

As long as the earth continues

its stony breathing, I will breathe.

Sometimes God comes to earth disguised as rust,

chewing away a chain link fence or mariner’s knife.

Listen to me, faithful silence: somehow

we’ve become strangers.

afterwards the others dream

of rain their pupils boil they light black candles

and pray the only prayer they know oh lord

spare this body set fire to another

may God beat

us awake scourge our brains to life may we measure every victory

by the momentary absence of pain there is no solace in history this is a gift

we are given at birth a pocket we fold into at death goodbye now you mountain

I’m becoming more a vessel of memories than a person it’s a myth

that love lives in the heart it lives in the throat we push it out

when we speak when we gasp we take a little for ourselves

in books love can be war-ending a soldier drops his sword

to lie forking oysters into his enemy’s mouth in life we hold love up to the light

to marvel at its impotence

I am not a slow learner I am a quick forgetter

such erasing makes one voracious if you teach me something

beautiful I will name it quickly before it floats away