Night Animals by Yusef Komunyakaa

Author:Yusef Komunyakaa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

ANOTHER KIND OF NIGHT

Slowly, the remembered trees, a nine-hundred-year-old sky,

the call of birds, a mamba snake snoozing beside a stone,

a mask tall as a man an hour after sunset,

jackals holding a ceremony at the edge of a lake,

it all fades into rancor. But my own face is still a boy’s,

losing its features down there where everything is one

godforsaken animal wounded in the nameless dark.

All the faces are one constellation where the dead

interrogate the living. The motion of the sea beneath—

god of moonlight, god of sharks patrolling the schooner,

& god of laughter on the deck. Hyenas on a hilltop,

are you still trying to tell me something about mercy?

In this other night riding the trade winds, the waves

underneath a creaking eternity, we are nothing

but cargo. Moans in the belly of a writhing leviathan

wind-tossed, the sails torn down to tatters, beached up

on white sand stretching out against sky for centuries,

seagulls calling to birth cries in the new world.

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