Tabish
Khair
RUMI AND
THE REED
Listen to
the song of the reed flute:
It
sings of separation.
Torn from
the leaf-layered, wind-voiced
Banks
of the pond,
It is
joined to sorrow and joy
By
a slender sound.
Who, asked
Rumi, can understand
The
reed’s longing to return?
Let
its raw lips rest then;
Let
all words be brief then.
And I, O
Believers, cried Rumi
(Having
lost the man he loved),
I who am
not of the East
Nor
of the West, un-Christian,
Not Muslim
or Jew, neither
Born
of Adam nor Eve,
What can I
love but the world itself,
What
can I kiss but flesh?
Let
my raw lips rest then.
Let
all words be brief.
(From
WHERE PARALLEL LINES MEET)
NURSE’S
TALES, RETOLD
Because
the east wind bears the semen smell of rain,
A warm
smell like that of shawls worn by young women
Over a
long journey of sea, plain and mountains,
The
peacock spreads the Japanese fan of its tail and dances,
And dances
until it catches sight of its scaled and ugly feet.
Because
the koel cannot raise its own chicks --
Nature’s
fickle mother who leaves her children on doorsteps
In the
thick of nights, wrapped in controversy and storm --
Because
the koel will remain eternally young, untied,
It fills
the long and empty afternoons with sad and sweet songs.
Because
the rare Surkhaab loves but once, marries for life,
The
survivor circles the spot of its partner’s death uttering cries,
Until,
shot by kind hunters or emaciated by hunger and loss,
It falls
to the ground, moulting feathers, searching for death.
O child,
my nurse had said, may you never see a Surkhaab die.
(From
WHERE PARALLEL LINES MEET)
AMMA
Down the
stairs of this house where plaster flakes and falls,
Through
the intimate emptiness of its rooms and hall,
I hear
your slow footsteps, grandmother, echo or pause
As they
used to through long summer afternoons spent within
The
watered down four-walls of khus and fragile drinks
Of ice,
mango or lemon, the circle of water-melon crescents.
Slowly you
shuffle examining each new tear in the curtains
Which will
have to be mended when the first monsoon rain
Provides a
respite from sun, curtails the need for shade.
Slowly on
arthritic joints you move from room to room
Marking
the damage of the years, evaluating how soon
The past
will collapse or how long the present last.
You never
need glasses to mark the contours of your house
Though you
can’t see grandsons at a distance, once wore a blouse
Inside
out. Nothing has changed, grandmother, no, not yet;
Though
your collected steps never turn the corner into you
In a
starched and white sari, the fragrance of soap around you.
And all
the curtains have long been taken down.
(From
WHERE PARALLEL LINES MEET)
LORCA IN
NEW YORK
Federico
García Lorca lonely in New York
With his
list of English words to get by barely
(Shishpil:
sex appeal), on the edge of hecho poético
Where an
image falls together not like clouds in the sky
But a
hurt’s shadow on the great cold wall of show,
Writes
about a hurricane of black pigeons splashing,
Writes
about the furious swarming coins that devour children,
Writes
about the poisonous mushroom (this is pre-Hiroshima),
Writes
about wiping moonlight from the temples of the dead,
Writes
about the fire that sleeps in dark flints, sleeps,
Awakes to
his own private memories of sorrow and loss,
That blue
horse of his insanity that makes him see
The three
who were frozen, the three burned, the buried three.
Spanish
Siddhartha, Buddha of the beautiful body, poet
Of
crystallised fish dying inside tinfoil tree trunks,
Hear the
pain in her smile here where only teeth exist
And flints
have long been caped in satin, dogs stay dogs,
Watch the
voice outside that ethnic shop – Fucking Paki
Place is
like always open – put a stainless steel lock
On Earth
and its timeless doors which lead to the blush of fruits.
(Published in WASAFIRI, London,
2005)
MONSTERS
Theirs the
city of the sayable. Hers its suburbs,
Filling
with the screamed obscenities of graffiti, gestures
At
coherent articulation, the word within that world
Of
splashed red, aerosoled blue, skulls and crossbones,
Crashing
cars, rose out of a gun barrel, space monsters, all
Unable to
utter a sound that will count as speech.
It is in
such a moment of sheer scream, unsayable,
That
Shakuntala looks in the mirror and is surprised
To see
fangs and fire, a gaping mouth like Kali’s,
Goddess
culled from the anger of colonisation:
It is a
vision that lasts only a second, but in it
Are
contained the silent stories of her history.
Her
lineage is monstrous. Scylax said so:
Daughter
of the dog-faced and blanket-eared.
Such
many-armed, hydra-headed ancestors
Shocked
the evangelising white man, puzzled
The
aesthetes of Europe in later centuries:
Truth and
beauty have long been denied her.
Did her
mothers know what she has forgotten:
The choice
was between mirror and monster?