Afternoon in Andalusia

But why wouldn’t geometry equal divinity

1000 + 1 + 1 + 1         What is faith

but trust in one & infinity         Once

in Granada I studied a wall of polygons

or was it stars or bees         or for a second         a flash

of gladiolas in a field until I could see

a galaxy         planets spinning         spokes on a wheel

clocks or buttons         vines blooming         a tornado

from a future century              garden of ellipses

my lover’s cornea         alight each morning 

God         so far away         & right in front of me

Copyright © 2022 by Sahar Romani. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 27, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“As much as this poem remembers a time when I visited the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, it also meditates on the power of geometric design in Islamic art and architecture. What is the relationship between squares, triangles, hexagons, and the sacred? I wrote this poem in search of an answer, plunging into memory of the hypnotic tilework I once encountered in the interior façades and ceilings of the Alhambra. While writing, I began to see how repetitive, interlocking geometric patterns, which invoke singularity and multiplicity, can render the cosmos, and perhaps, reveal a glimmer of the mundane and the divine all at once.”
—Sahar Romani