Her glance, like a gazelle’s,
her throat, that of a white deer,
lips red as wine,
teeth white as sea foam.
Tipsiness made her languid.
The gold-embroidered figures
of her wrap swirled round her,
brilliant stars around the moon.
During the night love’s hands
wrapped us in a garment of embraces
ripped open
by the hands of dawn.
You are vulnerable as glass are fall to peaces
When toiled of the stripping of our prides
You are restless in life
When we’ve born another to fight
All the bridges of your music will burn as soon
As you walk to the centre of our problems
You might have moved to our sacred rights
But your price is high in
Interest rates and then you prowl around
Unrespectful to all black familys homes
You are the dat watch protect and
Laugh as the blackfellas rise
The waiting for the sunrise is like waiting for a past
Of people to come and proclaim the land
But sitting here blocking out the unjustifiable sins
Sins are what you are doing
We present this work in honor of Hafez Day.
From the garden of Heaven a western breeze
Blows through the leaves of my garden of earth;
With a love like a huri I’ld take mine ease,
And wine! bring me wine, the giver of mirth!
To-day the beggar may boast him a king,
His banqueting-hall is the ripening field,
And his tent the shadow that soft clouds fling.
A tale of April the meadows unfold—
Ah, foolish for future credit to slave,
And to leave the cash of the present untold!
Build a fort with wine where thy heart may brave
The assault of the world; when thy fortress falls,
The relentless victor shall knead from thy dust
The bricks that repair its crumbling walls.
Trust not the word of that foe in the fight!
Shall the lamp of the synagogue lend its flame
To set thy monastic torches alight?
Drunken am I, yet place not my name
In the Book of Doom, nor pass judgment on it;
Who knows what the secret finger of Fate
Upon his own white forehead has writ!
And when the spirit of Hafiz has fled,
Follow his bier with a tribute of sighs;
Though the ocean of sin has closed o’er his head,
He may find a place in God’s Paradise.
We present this work in honor of the 15th anniversary of the poet’s death.
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you’re like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that I burn within, at the thought of you?
Trees prepare themselves for autumn;
can this city be our lost Istanbul?
Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness
as the street lights flicker
and the streets reek with rain.
You are indispensable, and yet you are absent …
Love sometimes seems akin to terror:
a man tires suddenly at nightfall,
of living enslaved to the razor at his neck.
Sometimes he wrings his hands,
expunging other lives from his existence.
Sometimes whichever door he knocks
echoes back only heartache.
A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih …
a song about some Friday long ago.
I stop to listen from a vacant corner,
longing to bring you an untouched sky,
but time disintegrates in my hands.
Whatever I do, wherever I go,
you are indispensable, and yet you are absent …
Are you the blue child of June?
Ah, no one knows you—no one knows!
Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters …
perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy?
Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain
that leaves you blind, beset, broken,
with wind-disheveled hair?
Whenever I think of life
seated at the wolves’ table,
shameless, yet without soiling our hands …
Yes, whenever I think of life,
I begin with your name, defying the silence,
and your secret tides surge within me
making this voyage inevitable.
You are indispensable; how can you not know?
Kim, composite of all my loves,
less real than most, more real than all;
of my making, all the good and
some of the bad, yet of yourself;
sole, unique, strong, alone,
whole, independent, one: yet mine
in that you cannot be unfaithful.
She died — as die the roses
On the ruddy clouds of dawn,
When the envious sun discloses
His flame and morning’s gone.
She died—like waves of sun-glow
By fleeting shadows chased;
She died— like heaven’s rainbow
By gushing showers effaced.
She died—like snow glad-gracing
Some sea-marge fair, when lo!
Rude waves each other chasing,
Quick hide it ‘neath their flow.
She died— as dies the glory
Of music’s sweetest swell:
She died—as dies the story
When the best is still to tell
She died— as dies moon-beaming.
When scowls the rayless main:
She died— like sweetest dreaming
Quick changed to waking pain.
She died— and died she early;
Heaven wearied for its own.
As the dipping sun, my Mary,
Thy morning ray went down!
But what lovers we were, what lovers,
even when it was all over—
the bull-black, deadweight wines that we swung
towards each other rang and rang
like bells of blood, our own great hearts.
We slung the drunk boat out of port
and watched our sober unreal life
unmoor, a continent of grief;
the candlelight strange on our faces
like the tiny silent blazes
and coruscations of its wars.
We blew them out and took the stairs
into the night for the night’s work,
stripped off in the timbered dark,
gently hooked each other on
like aqualungs, and thundered down
to mine our lovely secret wreck.
We surfaced later, breathless, back
to back, and made our way alone
up the mined beach of the dawn.
There is no better procuress
than the wind
because it lifts garments
and uncovers hidden
parts of the body
weakens the resistance
of branches
and makes them lean over
and kiss the faces of pools.
No wonder the wind is used
as a go-between
to carry messages back and forth
between friends and lovers.
That people which bestowed victory upon Nero
is more deserving of shame than he.
What was that Nero whom they worshipped?
He was coarse and ignorant,
A dwarf whom they raised on hight.
They crawled before him and he grew in arrogance.
They glorified him and extended his shadow
untill it filled the earth with crime.
They gave him of their power, so he
became a tyrant over them, and worse.
The ruler oppresses only when he has no fear
of the ruled revolting.
Some denounce Nero, But I, the nation;
had it defied him, retreat would have been his lot.
every nation creates its own Nero,
be he called “Caesar” or “Chosroes”.
In honor of Gandhi Jayanti, we present this work by one of India’s greatest Hindi language poets.
Within this body
breathes the secret essence.
Within this body
beats the heart of the Vedas.
Within this body
shines the entire Universe,
so the saints say.
Hermits, ascetics, celibates —
all are lost
seeking Him
in endless guises.
Seers and sages perfectly parrot
the scriptures and holy books,
blinded by knowledge.
Their pilgrimage,
and fasting,
and striving
but delude.
Despite their perfect practice,
they discover no destination.
Only the saints
who know the body’s heart
have attained the Ultimate, O Tulsi.
Realize this, and you’ve found your freedom.
While teachers trapped in tradition
know only the mirage
in the mirror.
Poets Corner 