I S S U E  10

Kazim Ali

Say Goodbye Kazim to the Shores of Asia Minor

After Cy Twombly, After Catullus

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an
acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any
thing. The wills above be done! but I would fain
die a dry death.

—Gonzalo, The Tempest

            Say Goodbye  —

Shard after shard you braid aimless 
Through waves and splinters in flotsam

Now among who has been left and who left
Whose shards still shoreward sail and true

Who are all heading out in ruin and tambor 
Tempered through jetsam discarded in shame—  

Are you but an anchor for the strewn tune 
Or a vessel following a simple course 

Arriving in storm to abide in the abode
Of no abandoned harbor found

A minstrel miscalculating and wavering 
under the weight of the state— 

God that was a thread appearing in rascal
Mistral gesture across evening

Sound open clouds open cold open
Rain relentlessly endlessly sent inside

Flickering window shine shiver raked
Asked mirage of eastern star please guide me—

Name cast out in kin 
Kazim can’t come to believe in

His dowsing patterns pray tell dawn 
Tell the truth about this legendary con

About credible whispers told bitter 
Water the blue moment of the wreck— 

Church-roof unspell and double back 
To the littered moment Kazim came in

Asking for water and tell him if the desert 
bleeds or starves you long and alarmed

Without holy text or minion
here between mountain and ocean and desert

Freed from the wreck unclaimed
choose a new name 

Alone you will find what shone
you will unsear untravel new road home

Kazim To   —

Broken the last lives to cover up 
your tracks

Snatch by snatch from the past the foreshortened scene 
dismember

Fog enters even now the cordoned off river, 
slipping through border control—

No one fathoms whether the terrain’s composer intended 
such shore erosion 

Such a suicide mission the water cannot but help 
change its form

Your blue coat hangs heavy in the parched province 
of shame and sumac

On cold bright hills the reciters stumble over who 
begat whom and why 

When there is no saving least of all you long after 
the river has emptied 

Out to the sky and the sky to the barricaded sea 
does the ghost

Still traveling the garden moaning about crocuses 
want to return

To us his sibilant soliloquy winter, the grave, 
the graven images

And will you drink the water, 
will you find the secret scale of music

In which one might measure breath or thyme
will you ghost

What pulls us from one another from earth 
from time can’t be called god

At the corners you creep still 
into the river to whisper

Were the wars of my youth won
How am I here speaking to you

Stolen voice down let the bell dark drop be what had shivered 
bell be what he needs river

Undeclared the plundered chill 
settle in you are still beloved

Strong and estranged the absented thunder in the bowl 
of the bell you wander

Vanishing leaves the pines rise out of the unwilded shore 
rain folding its hand

Dig a grave in the air 
unswallow the long planned slowing down

Nor can refrain you from ruin 
Sun pierced eye ought not to see

Like a dervish leaving home behind him 
Trace what you left in sound

            The Shores of Asia Minor  —

I will confess under the soft slow torture of snow I’m more on the side of night 

That speaks with its hands with nothing to remember and all spent by morning

Every hour is a glass to throw back or sip or press against the wall to listen

Yellow leaves flutter around like a storm like wild birds

Forked tongue leaking the leaves have all fallen

Who then is unraveling in the ground skin traveling

Are the snakes you here or birds or the angels falling from heaven

Back to soil and dirt who has hardened

Spanned when this bright shape unhands itself

Rain of fire streaming in on the backs of steel eagles

To landscape disbanding there’s only smoke 

And the birds at the wild shore all unlanding

Kazim Ali’s most recent collection is Sukun: New and Selected Poems. He lives in California.