by Farah Ghafoor
Content warning: mentions of death, violence
Hold my rusted pond-mirror and follow
me down this buttercup-swathed path to somewhere safe.
Sever the skyline’s shallow praise
from everything I’ve ever killed, from the cold star
I fused to the gate outside my heart.
Forget the blaring premiere of another day
wasted, the tinselled actors fleeing
from the show, and the audiences of wind
broken into countries: we’re running late.
Maybe next time we’ll see the end of this, but for now
help me lift the butterflies’ wealth of irises, their hydrangea
mines, some slackened rainbows of roses, and these final
seasons of tragedy.
Remember how we abandoned the weather
to the machines, their hollering relentless
as dogs, and left it concussed
to the children? You can still see it
over there, over the burning hill
of industry, where we expect the clashes
of rain, of flame, of stone. Even here,
we stumble over limbs, outstretched fingers,
with our mouths wing-netted, pupils blossomed
blank. Don’t worry I’ve already released
the laboured bees from each map,
and packed the colours I cannot see. in case
the flood in case the ice the blushing rock
striking the land the musical interlude.
Whatever you do don’t invite the credits
on this disaster film. only the attendance tracked
and printed in the sky, in the poem holding a last gasp
in my lungs.
Pay attention. I’m tired
of preparing obituaries Lost my voice
to the vacuums of money, buried its soundless
casket and can now only mimic the prayers
of the light’s cool laughter, its dewy face
pressed against the earth. I pray for us
in the chronic daydreams between sharp-footed lightning
and its shadowed trumpets, behind the trees
in their twisting skirts of precipitation, spoiled
gardenia tulle, and flocks of emerald ruffle.
I admit, hidden under my spine is the topaz
hope of the wet streetlamp. So you
yes, you your armies of dandelion lit like space,
whose fluttering seeds clog my brain to cotton
may climb into my pockets. Hurry up before
I change my mind. As for the unsoiled air,
please cauterize our throats
like dawn. Waters untouched by metal,
I ask you to let us drink from you one more time.
Like the waters under Helen, under Odysseus:
you warned us not to build homes
out of beauty, much less out of spear, but still
I search for our names in the mythic constellations
of wrongful murder—for any monument
of our bodies—and locate not even a needle
of enlightenment. I watch the moon, in my periphery,
watch me. Rude, isn’t it? What good is a witness
who can’t testify? Who doesn’t caution?
It was never on our side, of course, but who
can blame it? Every night waves the flat black flag
of a window for an animal infant unrequited
to its mother’s sound. Then through the dusk
doorway, the tired azure of the sky’s gaze
points away from us. Forgiveness,
hold the door. We’re coming,
even as the same summer darkens a shade
each year from thirst, even as the cruel winter carries its water
elusive and volatile. We’re coming,
even though this morning parallels all others,
because I promised this yawning century
tickets to a new world. Changed out of a dress
mourned white, banished the futures I spent
in the foreign planets of my head. Take my passport
while I slip memory into my hair you’ll never find it
and enter the procession of everything
I’m afraid of, behind the beasts that could play fetch
with our skulls: How I’ve loved to look
at them. And look up I do
to our routine extinction wielding a rubied sword
of the horizon. It blinks a single eye
and the hand-carved tide nears
but the boat is here,
its mast open to every worthy breath
FARAH GHAFOOR's work is published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Prism International, CV2, Ninth Letter, The Fiddlehead and elsewhere. Her poems have been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets and Best of the Net, and taught in postsecondary courses. Farah resides in Scarborough, Ontario.
Departure for Noah's Ark can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 6.1.
