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The Shortest Night

By Yusef Komunyakaa b. 1947 Yusef Komunyakaa

I went into the forest searching

for fire inside pleading wood,

but I can’t say for how long

I was moored between worlds.

I heard a magpie’s rumination,

but I don’t know if its wings

lifted the moon or let it drift

slow as a little straw boat

set ablaze on a winding river.

I learned the yellow-eyed wolf

is a dog & a man. A small boy

with a star pinned to his sleeve

was hiding among thorn bushes,

or it was how the restless dark

wounded the pale linden tree

outside a Warsaw apartment.

Night crawls under each stone

quick as a cry held in the throat.

All I remember is my left hand

was holding your right breast

when I forced my eyes shut.

Then I could hear something

in the room, magnanimous

but small, half outside & half

inside, no more than a song—

an insomniac’s one prophecy

pressed against the curtains,

forcing the ferns to bloom.

Source: Poetry (September 2010).

Biography

In his poetry, Yusef Komunyakaa weaves together the elements of his own life in short lines of vernacular to create complex images of life in his native Louisiana and the jungles of Vietnam. From his humble beginnings as the son of a carpenter, Komunyakaa has traveled far to become a scholar, professor, and prize-winning poet. In 1994, he claimed the Pulitzer Prize and the $50,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his Neon . . .

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