Ash Wednesday

By Kevin Young
Kevin Young's Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels, is an epic retelling in verse of the mutiny by fifty-three Africans, illegally sold in Havana, on board the slave ship Amistad in 1839.

Ash Wednesday
Once I thought everything
has a soul
Then I learnt only
the fool fears the tree—
It is empty—
So too the wind
that sends it which
way & that—
Now I know God
is such a wind
from which we
are rent—
The heavens take
the tree
from the tree—
leaf by leaf—
Being gone, taken,
is what means Heaven—
It is full—of wings—
A music of what
is missing
since nothing
but men have souls
tho, it appears,
not many.