The poems in this new volume by Abdourahman A. Waberi are introspective and inquisitive, reflecting a deep spiritual bond—with words, with the history of Islam and its great poets, with the landscapes those poets walked, among which Waberi grew up. The sage yearns here for the simplicity of each individual moment to somehow become eternal, for the histories and people that are part of him—his mother, his wife, his unborn child, the sacred texts that ground his being—to come together harmoniously within him, and to emerge through his words. Lyrical and personal, but with powerful historical and cultural resonances, these poems are the work of a master at the height of his powers.

About the Author
Abdourahman A. Waberi, from Djibouti, is a prize-winning novelist, essayist, poet, and professor of Francophone literature at George Washington University. Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet and translator.

Contents:Machine generated contents note: Living Soul
O Men
May My Right Hand Forget Me
Slantwise
Touchstones
Juvenescence
Of a Salvo in Its Shrine
At the Botanical Garden
Seemingly No Big Deal
Chasing after Death
Bottle
Yes, but What Do You Say about This, My Daughter?
Language of Birds
Daily Awakening
Reader
O Mother
Absence
Sepia
Vanity
It's a Girl
Yesterdaze
Spiritual Exercises
Access
Aura
Anchor
Turn Away from the Cramped Attentional Tunnel
Ascension
Asceticism
Pavement Struggle
Shroud for All Time
Wager
Bees
Wedding
In a Naked Voice
Detente
O Rising Sun
Sitting
Axis
Advent
Not a Day Will Pass
Faerie
Hoopoe.