I don't know the rules. If I go looking
for grace and find it, what will grace
be but penance for my past, a silver
sinew-thread wrapping 'round old
wrongs, gray hair for the
fickle.
I've naught but want for sweet release
from this history. The bombs ignored,
repeating in gramophone static
dripping stiff
as wet bamboo. I remember someone
once sang here, once strung together
chords so sweet they rang like peace-
bells beneath cloudless sky. They've
rang the bell upon my jaw and
done no wrong.
It's not so much unlike one's curiously
cold reception at a funeral. The cold
and rain ****** at the skin
during graveside hymnal.
As long as the earth continues
its stony breathing I will breathe.
That which I cannot help but do.
Stuck between boulders, I sing.
When it stops, I will shatter back
into gravity. Into quartz.
"Rimrock" is a poem from Kaveh Akbar's 2017 collection "Calling a Wolf a Wolf." Akbar's lines are in standard type; my lines are in italics.
