Sun to Void

I cannot help my gaze
and did not choose this.
I was a flurry of atoms.
I was a disassembled spark.
I desired impression.
I desired progeny.
Then the Lord said unto me:
Suppose a daughter.
Does it please you?
Immensely. Immeasurably.
But I was not myself a daughter,
could be no mother of one or three.
So I was given all daughters.
All blooms, all fruits.
At first, I was a lamp
craned above a clovered garden.
The roots, they suckled the dirt,
and lashed it, and crawled for eons.
Then they were standing upright
all over the earth.
My gaze horizoned.
My origination fogged.
My eyes searched forever,
my gaze compassing.
I asked God to turn me a way,
give me eyelids, give me veil.
Give me some cover, like every other.
God, please. Please ease me, God
until God grew weary of my weary
and fixed for me an axis.
God said: Wait. Repeated: Wait.
I gave you daughters on daughters.
Are you not pleased?
I do not know pleasure.
I know not what I become.
God said: Your touch
is incomprehensible.
Now you know Me.
No fathom between us.
All men turn their faces to you,
but verily, they turn a way.
They tarry home.

Copyright © 2022 by Ladan Osman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 15, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I wrote ‘Sun to Void’ thinking about climate change and the Icarus-like obsession with the sun, with touching its surface and then harnessing its energy. I felt the sun was due some empathy and some imagination. This led to a meditation on the endlessness of Black labor, as something that’s expected to replenish itself. How, in these disaster systems, our light is something we must BE, something we must DO. I’m exploring these connections as a daughter of the sun, from a people whom the sun loves.”
—Ladan Osman