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The following are excerpted from Zelaldinus, Irwin Allan Sealy's forthcoming book-length sequence of poems.
The sequence interleaves the 16th and 21st centuries and--reflecting on the ambiguous legacy of the emperor Akbar, the Great Mughal--makes them porous. It is set in Akbar's abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra. Panoramic, varied in style, form and tone, the poems fan out from a narrative spine: Irv, a tourist visiting Fatehpur Sikri, meets the ghost of emperor, aka Zelaldinus, and an Indian, Percival, longs for his Pakistani lover, Pax. The book is narrated in flashes and turns by a saint, Irv, Zelaldinus himself, Abul Fazl, Percival and others.
This excerpt is an Almost Island exclusive.