Paradise

Phillip B. Williams

How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.

—misner, from Paradise, by toni morrison

We read about war and wonder

where weeping goes. We look for a sign.

We are out of rain, so we reach for fire

and find the excess startling. We find prayer

in the balm of a bird’s flight, teaching us the wind.

We find flowers and know they are worthy.

We find Darwish’s hymn in the horseman’s heart.

We put it in the heart of a child

and the transom between day and night cracks and falls

at our feet. The child wakes

to eternity, birthing in the sky a sign: rain and fire

at once. Eternity at the feet of a child.

There is more time. There will be a harbor, a home.

Home—may your feet know the softness of stillness and pollen.

Home—here, the stones will not betray you.

Home—your body is yours, your body is yours and is yours.

To the cruel days behind you, we say melt into eternity.

There is enough darkness here to shade a generation.

To fall in love beneath. To sleep within

its weeping. The bird’s flight startles

like a sudden bell at the end

of prayer. At the end

of prayer, how does life begin?

How flowers begin: a seed, a breakthrough, a bud

opening as if to chant, “Like this! Like this! Like this!”

what surprised you about the composition of this poem?

That I could use intense repetition without falling into redundancy shocked me. Typical for my writing is an attempt to always expand. I want my lines and images to evolve across sound, shape-shift, and navigate unexpected turns that often require a constant reliance on introducing new words rapidly, as though revising the moment in real time.

Here, repetition of words and even phrases mimics more closely the act of prayer. Precision finds its power through urgency. The requirement for the appeal to be heard reveals itself via the emphatic plea, as if to say, “I want this and only this. Nothing else can satisfy me. Nothing else can scaffold my need, and therefore nothing else is needed.” To trust in limited language anchored me to my grief in such a way that I could see it more clearly.

Phillip B. Williams is the author of the poetry collections Thief in the Interior and Mutiny, as well as the novel Ours. He is a professor of creative writing at Rice University.