And The Day After Poem by Massoud Abolfathi

And the day after his going, into the deep,
into the nowhere of wherever Being is,
into its unseen vastness, its impossible beyond — death.

As if everything suddenly catches fire,
as if it has become
and yet remains unmade,
as if
some word has taken this poem,
this endless voice of what is happening,
and changed it
into reaching for nothing.

As if
his heart has become a star's little reed of speech,
and a note coils slowly through the heart of this night —
heavy, steadfast, silent, without end,
deep in the unmade clay of silence —

then suddenly rises from the heart of this instant,
only to be gone
before it has arrived,
gone into the near estrangement of death.

Suddenly —
unsaid, unmade —
into silence.
Oh, this silence.

As if speech itself,
in the silence of its own being,
has fallen silent.

What more can it say?
Something has become
and cannot become in its becoming.

A tear cannot become
in its falling.
A song cannot become
in its singing.
A poem cannot become
in its saying.

As if something
cannot become,
cannot be made,
and remains unmade
upon this ruin.

Massoud Abolfathi

Dawn,4: 30

October 16,2023