unless it’s made of stone.
لاجورد Lāzhward
migrating from Persia,
smuggled from Farsi
to Arabic, & thrown
like a wingless bird
across the sky-dark sea
until its version
spills from English mouths.
Lapis lazuli.
O trap of beauty,
you are a fiction….
Exhausted, at day’s end
of an oven-summer
I duck out of the house
into the truth of twilight
blue. No other name
than azure, azure,
and no other home
the color of this sky
struck above this earth,
no path to heaven
except through this dirt.
This poem first appeared in Poetry (2021).
—
Philip Metres has written twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge (2024) and Shrapnel Maps (2020). Winner of three Arab American Book Awards, a Guggenheim, two NEA fellowships, and a Pushcart Prize, he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University.
