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Moving Westward for Eternity

Khaled Mattawa | Poetry

The always rising
of the night, the snow-
ball of time,
its momentum

and consequence,
tumbling into
the parade of names—
to value, to draw

charters, laws,
on the sun’s brow
on the land’s waistline,
the sky’s all absorbing

eye, the cycle found
in a grain, in a mountain
in fathomless sulfur,
in that fish abdomen.

What remains
unmoved, what moves
to inevitable of surge,
desire’s urge

and the atrophying
horizon–You’re all
in, hurtling into
the throbbing,

your motions,
seconds to season,
claiming a vista
to see from where

the world ought
to be seen— but
soon, sooner than
you thought

you’re the leaf,
bud, specimen,
symptom
being observed.

Fallen angels
as evening after
evening widens
and steals on,

also taking notes.
Will they ever tell
you what you see
but soon forget?

Will what you learn
guide what you
determine happens
to you next?