“I like to imagine Icarus, having fallen, having lost his wings, swimming to shore, crawling up the rocks, finding his new life, no longer son of the great Daedalus, but an anonymous man, lost, far from home, ordinary but alive.” ~ Kazim Ali, The Silver Road
It returns, that dream pattern: blue
rhizomes of water streaming outward,
receiving him as he falls out of the sky. Each
day, bells somberly intone from the shore
where the dead, wrapped in bright cotton
and gilded with marigolds, wait for pyres
to be lit on the ghats. He should have been
among them. But it’s years since he took up
this life, joined the others who tend the fires;
he’s learned how to stack kindling and scatter
a fine powder of sandalwood, smear surfaces
with ghee— the same way the dead are anointed
by those who still love them as fiercely as they did
when they were alive. It never grows old, his wonder-
ment at the rituals to prepare for release—
how a lattice of wood keeps the body from bolting
upright as its insides empty and the muscles
contract, as organs darken and shrink. If only
his father could witness how all that binds
sinew and flesh to its rudder of bone melts away
like honey, like oil. In this furnace, nothing stands
a chance; how could twine and a wingspan of feathers
outstrip the heat of the sun? After every burning,
ash in the air clings to your lashes, your clothing,
your skin. Finally, flames shoot out of the eye
sockets and the skull bursts open: and that great,
stumbling bird of the soul leaves windows and doors
flapping on their hinges as it exits the house.
Beautiful!