I’m always accompanied by poetry, my favourite poets, revisits to favourite poems and poems I simply like and appreciate. On top of that, I spend six months to a year with a new discovery. Since summer of 2021 this has been the Persian American poet Kaveh Akbar. His work fascinates me endlessly, so whenever and wherever I open a page in the volume Calling a Wolf a Wolf or find a poem of his online, it’s a sure thing that something will grab my attention and won’t let go.
He’s written several poems which feature breathing in them, and today I’d like to share one which makes a beautiful cross-reference to the spiritual dimension of breathing anatomy.
“Everything That Moves is Alive and a Threat – A Reminder
Everything that moves is alive and a threat–a reminder
to be as still as possible. Devastation occurs
whether we’re paying attention or not. The options: repair
a world or build a new one. Like the belled cat’s
frustrated hunt, my offer to improve myself
was ruined by the sound it made. How do I look today,
better or worse than a medium-priced edible
arrangement? I am sealing all my faults with platinum
so they’ll glean like the barrel of a laser gun. Astronomy: the luminosity
of Venus reminds me to wear orange in the woods. Nobody
ever pays me enough attention. I’ve spent my whole adult life
in a country where only my parents can pronounce my name.
Please, spare me your attempts; I’m a victim of my own
invention. The desire to help others is a kind of symmetry,
an eccentricity of our species like blushing, gold teeth, and life
after children. I don’t worry myself with what my doctor said
before he burst into flames. I just eat his wet blue pills,
stay emotionless as a fig. Muscle memory: a heart
calls for you by name. Come to bed with me, you honest thing–
let’s break into science. I’ll pluck you from my mouth
like an apple seed, weep with you over other people’s lost pets.
The strangeness between us opens like a pinhole on the open floor:
in floods a fishing boat, a Chinese seabird, an entire galaxy
of starfish. We are learning so much so quickly. The sun
is dying. The atom is reducible. The god-harnesses
we thought we came with were just our tiny lungs.”
Source: Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Penguin Books 2017