January 9th, 2008
What they call mania
is a mind
brilliant in darkness.
In you, Manhattan blinks.
No one hears your terror
at the East River,
how it beats
its head upon the rocks.
When you dethroned god
you saw the world
too vast, too heavy
to hold, and to learn this
was to learn wrath.
In these white rooms,
no one comes
to mourn your death,
then rebirth.
God, awake all night:
rest, rest.
You are weary,
and the world turns without you.
Credits
Directed by Eric Felipe-Barkin.
"January 9th, 2008” by Adeeba Shahid Talukder, originally published on the Best American Poetry website, with subsequent publications in Poetry Daily and New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims (Red Hen Press, 2021, ed. Kazim Ali).