Michael Anania
De Un Mundo Raro
“stand up and look at me face to face”
Sappho
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
--
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.
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
--
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.