"In the final months before his death, his children would bring Mr. Layeq the incomplete draft of his magnum opus that had occupied him for four decades. In 800 pages of rhyming verse, the poet wrestles with the thoughts of the epic’s main subject: a young member of the Islamist insurgency that would eventually topple the communist government in which Mr. Layeq served as a minister into the early 1990s."
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The island I called Hag Island in this poem isn’t, after the ten or so years since I wrote 'Local History,' an island anymore, not even at full high tide. What was island has become something more like a hump in the marsh. The salt brook that runs through has shallowed out and shifted. Everyday erosion and hurricane winds will do that."
