Echoes

Zodiac of Echoes by Khaled Mattawa speaks from the position or place of a restless body that rarely lands. I felt like I was in transit throughout the book and I even went to the moon.

That's why the final poem in this collection is appropriately entitled "Dark Anthem" and has a key word "anchor" in it.  The final lines:

This is how I carry myself
back to you. Under
porch light you'll find
me tenuous as star dust 
as I reach for the mist
of your breath to anchor me,
for the rub of your touch
to render me mortal and resonant.

Early on one of the first words that came to mind was "dark" given this wasn't a light read. I felt as though I was reading the news at times from a poetic journalist of some sorts especially in the poem "Tuned."  And also in the poem "Echo & Elixir 4 there's even a line that states "My hair, tremulous, told the news of this day."  Funny how hair can tell so much about a person but the following lines tell you a little about the poet's philosophy I believe.  From "Echo & Elixir 7"...

The stories you believe are the stories you make. 
So one enters a room alone.
People there and they see the dust
and they hear the echo of travel...

It is not why
my boredom is resourceful,
why it finds me wherever I go...

Even though Mattawa even takes us to the moon as I said before, even there he doesn't find peace or solution...only old stars and wolves in search of conquest.  His nearly desensitized eyes still fortunately speak of love in this book but never pity I suppose for all the pain.  As he writes:

I am moved again by something I felt before,
shaken, but without an atom of pity in my body, 
filled with a transparency capable of bearing
the whole world...

This reminds me of those people who unlike myself do love to watch the news and be the bearer of the worst headlines they can find.  There is a sort of strength in taking on the whole world and every problem in it. Maybe Mattawa explains why he takes us on this journey also in the following line found in "Emerson Revisitation":

We come to witness
our dispossession. 
We come to
hear the scales of survival.

I survived the journey but it was dark at times, as is life.