Letter to Zephyr the West Wind, from the boy Hyacinth
- Letter to Zephyr the West Wind, from the boy Hyacinth
Dear fickle once a year wonder, reach for me even now, will you, but know my stem wanders lightward even as your gusts thrust
into the soil reaching me. Rage in your comely way but know you arrived every year on his heels, that yellow timeless fire-starter
who shone madly on me even in the cold months. Perhaps I lack vision, lying with the wonder that arrived first but I thought only
to master my mother’s ken. Take comfort then that I know it was you who invented me, made beautiful my ruin.
Unhook each point from the silver-backed sky. Unfasten the buttons of my winter jacket and unpetal me.
More than merely warm me, you murdered me into music. You killed my fearful youth and brought me to flower. [End Page 50]
Kazim Ali’s many books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction include All One’s Blue: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins India, 2015) and Resident Alien: On Border Crossing and the Undocumented Divine (University of Michigan Press, 2015). He teaches in the Creative Writing and Comparative Literature programs at Oberlin College.
