Robert Hedin Verse-Virtual 2017 July

July 2017

I am the author, translator, and editor of two dozen books of poetry and prose, most recently At the Great Door of Morning: Selected Poems and Translations (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). I am also the co-founder and former director of the Anderson Center, an artist retreat in Red Wing, Minnesota.

The Greatest
for Michael Waters

What I remember most about Muhammad Ali
Are not the fast hands and loose, graceful footwork.
Or Manila or Zaire. Or even what came after—
The slurred speech, the sad slow shuffle.
No, what I remember is a boy somewhere
In the foothills of the snowy Zagros Mountains,
A small Kurdish boy in a long blue robe
Who gave us directions that day we were lost,
And how he knew nothing of America
But two syllables he sang over and over
In the thin, high-pitched voice of a girl—
Ali, Ali—then laughed and all at once
Began to bob and weave, jabbing and juking,
His robe flaring a moment like a fighter’s.
Ali. One word, two bright syllables
That turned to smoke in the morning air.
And he pointed down the long dusty road
To Hatra and Ur, the ruins of Babylon,
And the two ancient rivers we had read about,
Their dark starless waters draining away into fog.

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