The poems in this new volume by Abdourahman A. Waberi are introspective and inquisitive, reflecting a deep spiritual bond--with words, with the history of Islam and its great poets, with the landscapes those poets walked, among which Waberi grew up. The sage yearns here for the simplicity of each individual moment to somehow become eternal, for the histories and people that are part of him--his mother, his wife, his unborn child, the sacred texts that ground his being--to come together harmoniously within him, and to emerge through his words. Lyrical and personal, but with powerful historical and cultural resonances, these poems are the work of a master at the height of his powers.

Abdourahman A. Waberi, from Djibouti, is a prize-winning novelist, essayist, poet, and professor of Francophone literature at George Washington University. Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet and translator.