BY KAREEM TAYYAR

This was in the year when
a ship took leave of the water
& floated out across the clouds.

When the clouds became
the opened palms of the angels.

The year when the angels strung
their wings across the telephone lines
like laundry drying in the sun.

Only there was no sun.
Not that year.

That came later,
when the children turned first
into horses & then into ghosts,

when the rain fell in love
with a poet,

when the poet forgot his own name
& then the names for everything else.

That was a good year.
A year without names.

A year when I learned to kneel
without my knees ever touching the ground,

& where the gods all prayed to us.

But I am getting ahead of myself.
I should start at the beginning.

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Source: Poetry foundation.