Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Aubade
Waking to your reflection on the pane
blurred already in the maple’s arms
I think of Orpheus about to look
and Eurydice about to die again
and shut my eyes, letting the night fall back,
which brings me suddenly to the young boy
up early one fall morning long ago,
fumbling for his glasses while the world
seen dimly as through tears or through the window
of the airplane taking him from home that night
receded more the more he tried to look,
as he now vanishes the moment I
open my eyes and find your image too
fading away, the day about to break.
Armen Davoudian is the author of the chapbook Swan Song (Bull City Press, 2020). His poems and his translations from Persian have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative, The Sewanee Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is now a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University. (updated 4/2021)
Davoudian’s chapbook Swan Song was reviewed at AGNI Online by Zoë Pollak.