Dear Dangerous How Do You Explain It by Kazim Ali
Dear Dangerous, How Do You Explain It
Kazim Ali
We believed the world would end,
fled now into the alley or the forest.Among the amber that clots minute by minute
or a ship that sails to show how long time takes to happenHow does one skip a stone on water,
the moment between skips.A preoccupation with god or history is no occupation.
It happens that every day is synchronousthat I am still right now a little boy or dying.
How do you explain it,seven o’clock, out of breath and arduous—
Dear unsettled evening, all the cold shadows,how lucky we were to have lived
in the world—
MARGINALIA
1.
Day 14 of The Sealey Challenge. Today’s offering is The Fortieth Day by Kazim Ali.
2.
What is the boundary between the sacred and the everyday? I feel that in this book the questions hold more weight than answers. These poems inhabit the spiritual as it is intertwined with the physical, where wandering feels like a form of prayer, and where the process of seeking becomes the answer in itself.
3.
Reading the poems feel like I am having whispered conversations, not with an external deity, but with the self—exploring faith, loss, and the passage of time. I feel that the poet invites me, the reader, to sit with the unknown, to find comfort in the act of questioning.
4.
There is doubt, hope, and the quiet acceptance that some things remain beyond our understanding. Perhaps sometimes it is okay to stop searching—to pause and sit in the silence—and simply listen.
KEEP READING
SOURCE
This poem appeared in The Fortieth Day by Kazim Ali, published by BOA Editions, 2008. Shared here with profound gratitude.
DESCRIPTION
“From the Bible to the Quaraan, the fortieth day symbolizes the last moment before deliverance, a moment in time when a supplicant or prophet or stormbeaten passenger knows there is no state “after,” but finally accepts the present state as a permanent one.
In The Fortieth Day, Kazim Ali follows the fractured narratives and moving lyrics of his debut collection, The Far Mosque, with a deeply spiritual and meditative book exploring the rhetoric of prayer.”
ENDNOTES
- Read more poems by Kazim Ali • Find books by this poet • Or view my library
- Explore other works in pursuit of: what is holy • endings • gratitude • Or browse the index
- This is part of The Sealey Challenge.
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