A Poem by Ashraf Osman


            


            The Other Way

            

            
I remember you vaguely,

            an early story of those days when

            the world was expanding still.

            
I remember your name before

            it shed a few letters, back when

            the night was dark still,

            and engulfed us, ignorants,

            in its conspiring siren song.

            
I remember, vaguely, the way

            I must have felt about you when

            my body was uncharted yet,

            and you found it,

            and didn't know what to call it.

            
Your voice, in those days

            before it learnt its modulations,

            when I prayed for it on the hour

            and God was immortal still.

            Now reaches me,

            lilting and leaden,

            and I forget to recognize it.

            
And in the silence between

            when you extract yourself from

            the loudness of your days, now,

            and the reverberation of my name,

            we say all that we will ever say again:

            the love subtle and passing,

            the memories all but inconsequential,

            and the two of us long estranged.

            
I still ponder, with that fresh amazement,

            at how it's come to this.

            At the full circle of anonymity,

            and these dates that compel us still

            to reach across the great divide

            that has grown between us,

            leaving us looking,

            always, the other way.