print previewback DILRUBA AHMED
When the Time Comes
after Donald Justice
Every night, I trowel
a handful of soil
on the grave and still
it will not fill.
Tell me why
the texts on grief
suggest sequence
instead of repetition.
Close the casket,
drape the mirrors,
let the mourning song
cease. The clocks
already punished
into silence, the stilled
heart keeping
its peace.
Whoever washes the bodies
now shrouded, God
absolves of forty sins.
When the time comes,
we must not look,
we must not
look away.Grief
is no train we embark,
weary passengers,
conductors barking
all aboard or next stop.
Unless the train-cars
are shrouded in black,
edging forward along
wire-thin rails, an acrobat’s
balancing act.
Unless the train pass
is smudged or blank,
the return uncertain.
The shouted town names
familiar but indistinct, so distant
you can’t be sure whether
to disembark or not.
Unless your luggage shifts
each time in shape and size,
so that today you board
with ease and grace
but tomorrow you’ll stumble
up steps, bumping fellow travelers
on your aisle-long shuffle to stuff
your bag into a storage space.
Unless the signposts at each stop
form a Möbius strip. Unless
some days you lose your grip.
Unless scenery repeats and repeats
but with a boulder misplaced, a cairn
missing stones. Unless you travel alone.
Your effort to detrain seems
strangely routine, as you heave
your luggage once more from a bin, wondering
how—unassisted—you brought it aboard.
Unless you step from the train
again and again. Unless no one’s around
when the lock breaks
and you find, inside, rocks
that crack at the slightest touch
into impossible geometries.
Unless the ride goes on
and on until even the conductor
can no longer say which way
is north or south, west or east. 
From Bring Now the Angels by Dilruba Ahmed. Reprinted with permissions from University of Pittsburgh Press.