From “The Voice of Sheila Chandra”
By Kazim Ali
What represses unhomes in the sound
Who has made me what is made me
Is a voice just muscles and shape and
Breath to phrase a song boats assemble
At the mouth of the harbor mouth in
Earth you who wrote an ode to silence
Never wrote of what is silenced I did
Seek all resounding caves let the voice
Be lit all the lanterns in the new world we
Need the language of stone from string
To string quiver in the opening the garden
So beautiful Lucifer dark sun of morning
No Eden but innocence no expulsion
But after
•
No more will I listen to other than
A single note moaned not known
I do not here think again what place
Presents itself own moan well eye
Here body as a battery of the one
Moment when it is time to open
Your mouth to plug in I will allow what
I invented to find its color make
A shape which neither water nor
Sky do how do you now in this
Contained shape go through
Your life not like a constellation
Not guessed at intuited or divined
No name so how do you discern a shape for
What is often called g-d
•
Vantablack was made for missiles
Or planes for defense purposes so dark
No eye could see it some voices are
Like that no one could hear them it
Is not good to be lost to be lost is
More than metaphor for spiritual
Condition I sit at the terrace overlooking
The green sea perhaps it is failure
That ought to be sought the voice
That fails falls silent Sheila’s or
The body’s the blue failed me the sun
Fails every evening I we you have all
Failed too everyone who strove all these
Long years for peace failed
•
August 7 Predawn blue and blue the sound
Of the sea further away and less violent lights
On the water fishing boats closer than I
Imagined no one is awake some animals
Maybe what I do without knowing in a
Harrowing world what I do without knowing
As I listen to the gurgle of water against
The promontory I feel like I am listening
To a body how slow and opening a piece
Of tune where one does not know how
It will unfold no chord or cadence to tell
You in sound what the path will be how
It will happen until it happens I do not want
To be alone what does it mean anyway when
Someone says “Muslim”
•
Can she still feel music in her body can she
Vocalize even without technology of the
Mouth tongue palate glottis vocal chords
What is a voice Anish Kapoor granted
Exclusive right to work with blackest
Black she now communicates through notes
And gesture Vantablack made for
Military purposes like sound also used
For torture all sounds to wake you vibrate
Your brain what emerges as an echo from
Music as torture children on the beach
Playing god is sound or art or science
Shit and sex the body’s echo what mess
Is left in the big or the little death
•
Sheila’s voice always in the background
Always disappearing into the music
Of what surrounds it the way one loses
Oneself in sex or death or the moment
Of shitting I got lost in Salman’s
Music he said it was a surrender of
Ego when he left me behind but really
It was a surrender of my will words too
Have god inside but for the prize of
The body they do not compete can
Not hold the storm of time cannot
Hold the line do I touch the ocean
Inside will my family come to
My funeral
•
That night we swam the full moon
Civilized us federated us gave us
Our nationality we who were lost
I have now lost what little heritage
I did have returned to the rude
Rough world long vowels of
Morning evening birds scream
No soft blanket falling to cover
But a throttling a suffocation
Of dusk no silence when the self
Stills the absence of noise is itself
Torture I cannot sleep tongued loose
Drones move through a riff by
A singer without papers
•
August 9 Eleanna takes me out on
The water Miller exploding the form
Of the novel itself I see now how Nin
Wanted to move away from his vociferous
Singing of the world as material to try
To construct a music of the way
The mind works still fed by light on the
Water a mute noise of engines under
Water as the boat passes the light
House and heads out for open sea
Remembering in Palestine crawling
Down the hill trying to catch a wifi
Signal from the settlement untapped
Improvisation of space
•
At the stone terrace the gardener lingers
Clipping hedges while I work breeze
Between us soon I will return I read
The article about a poet who was killed
In the street his poems untranslated
All the artists and writers killed the open
Space of the sea yesterday Eleanna and I
Went too far out went almost all the way
To Marseille we saw the pink-gray sky
Of wildfire I accepted the waves I found
In the chapters of the Quran to sing my
Way through turbulence draw a way
Through the waves savage wildfire all
The villages evacuated
•
We woke to the smell of burning air
A little cool smell of charred refuse
Colors muted last night the moon
Came clear nearly blue eyes too
Painfully large rough on the eyes and
Impatient but I wanted to look so
Badly for the meteors the sea
Crashing against the rocks smoke
From the fire obscured the sky
In the morning we rowed across
The harbor and realized fear of heights
And fear of depth is the same just one
You see and one you don’t
