Kazim Ali

The River Cloud

On paper, on the sky, on the river’s mad meniscus

 

I’ve drawn a blank

 

Remaindered against the banks, pressed there by the current

 

The river dispersing into the light gray

 

Cloud me down by the river edged with willow

 

The smoke of the river cloud canticles

 

A thought river between shores leads out and out

 

River draw all this through me

 

What’s hidden beneath the hull of the boat

 

Or in the cloud of the river

 

Future river feeding

 

The charts are no good

 

The far shore disappears

 

Give it to me now to live

 

In the river’s unmaking epoch

 

Locking itself into the oars

 

Onto the boat my cloud

 

Boat my body

 

Body my oar

 

Oar and fog

 

Fog oar rowing

 

Cloud oar rowing

 

 


The River Cloud appears in The Far Mosque (Alice James Books, 2005).