Michael Anania

De Un Mundo Raro

“stand up and look at me face to face”                                                               
                                         Sappho                                                              

i.
 
hands, Toltec or Persian,
     it hardly matters; what is
          printed there, something
 
to be recited or read,
     spoken out in familiar
          company, a compact
 
witnessed, hand to
    hand and face to face--
         stars, the moon, night
 
music, one breath
     and then another, face to
         face or hand to face, once again
 
 
 
ii.
 
a dove’s shadow
     ripples across paving
          stones, calligraphy
 
flexed from its wingtip
    to the first creases of
         your palms, nastaliq
 
inked across the whorls
     of self, swept like furling
         scarves or skeins of silk
 
over the deeper furrows
     clutch and grasp leave there,
          tracings of fortune and desire
 
 
 
iii.
 
ceremony is, after all,
    purpose joined with place,
        harvest and weaving, gathering
 
sheaf and thread, colors, yarns
    spun between waxed fingers, texts
        veined as in a bright  butterfly’s wings;
       
song moves among smooth upland
     stones, achiote tinted lips, the blue
          agave spiked hillside, water falling
 
seaward, clamoring its own
   music under a canopy of pink
        flowers and broad green leaves



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Michael Anania has published more than a dozen books of poetry, including Riversongs, Selected Poems, In Natural Light, and Heat Lines, a novel, The Red Menace, and a collection of essays, In Plain Sight. His work as a poet, fiction writer, and essayist is widely anthologized and has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Czech. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a member of the faculty in writing at Northwestern University.