This Longing
This longing you express
is the return message.
—Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks
How to enter this fleeting
room with no fixed walls
or floor yet shifting
in tandem so there is
rushing wind at my ears and feet
as the ceiling glides above me.
If every prayer has an address
am I praying for me
or am I a prayer
through which the Holy One
prays, praises the world.
✶✶✶✶
Sharon Dolin is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Manual for Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016); a book of translations from Catalan: Gemma Gorga’s Book of Minutes (Oberlin College Press, 2019); and a prose memoir Hitchcock Blonde (Terra Nova Press, 2020). Her translation from Catalan, Late to the House of Words: Selected Poetry of Gemma Gorga, won the Malinda A. Markham Memorial Prize in Translation and is forthcoming from Saturnalia Books in fall, 2021. She lives in New York City where she is associate editor of Barrow Street Press and directs Writing About Art in Barcelona.
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