There is no fixed truth
in this moment—only the hollow
clank of knowing between
your ribs, the ticking
clock, the bomb in your
stomach. Grasp the cold
shovel. In absence, the heart
breathes; the lungs beat.
teach us to be kind
to the shadows
dragging behind us
the half-blind woman
stops the other half-blind woman
tells her
about those bad numbers
creeping under her door
about how they besiege
her place
and grin from the shelves
how they snigger
behind her back –
the other woman
nods sympathetically
takes bread crumbs
out of her pocket
feeds imaginary pigeons
oh God
be good
be good to recycled angels
and to homeless warriors
be good to what is left of the day
and to the darkness to come
I’m moonless as tonight’s sky, helpless
as a rabbit’s blind and furless kits
and in my body’s cave misgivings hang
from the walls like folded wings. To combat
thumping pain and racing fear, I picture
a Matisse-red room with French windows,
potted palms and a half-naked woman
lounging on a sofa, then the yellow surprise
of the first drifts of daffodils trumpeting
spring to morose February this morning.
It doesn’t work and the silence is implacable
as the dark – I wish it purred like the cat settling
her warm self into the curve of my spine
to sleep but the black cat has long gone.
A tremble in the air – and there are my friends,
shadowy at first beyond my bed. Their outlines
slowly fill out with muted colours and now
they’re facing each other in two rows
as if for a formal dance. They reach out,
join hands across the divide. I gaze
at their arms which seem to form the ribs
of a boat, the kind ancient kings were buried in
but this is no death ship – it’s a hammock
they’ve made for me. The moment I lie down
it takes my body’s burden. No one speaks
but touch has its own language. I let go
of distress and feel such lightness of being
I could lift off into the blue like a damselfly.
excerpt from Myra Schneider’s twelfth poetry collection, Persephone in Finsbury Park, which was published last month by Second Light Publications and launched for Myra’s 80th birthday. It is available through p f poetry site.
It is lonely on cool tiles of my corruption
eye on domes of Rome, midday stretches
lethargic silence on ashes I burn
in the high sun on red rooftops basking in refuge
feathers from ashes, feathers short of a wing
to glide down like a raven to your chiral streets
there’s a congregation praying for my salvation
a choir singing the gospel, mirage on church steeples
I wring last drop of resolve in your mouth
and keep a river in my womb to wash my disillusionment
squatting to gut irony collected on your stairways
raw against my breastbone fishing-line stringed
putrescent promises familiar in flared nostrils
same as ancient prayers filtering through parched tourist lips
I will tell you again of pagan sins kneeling in confession
when you stop searching for the righteous woman
buried under four layers of leathered skin
you ask me if I want to pray with you for redemption
I ask you where do we go from here
where do we go not to converge in a dream
excerpt from Rumor and published here with the poet’s permission. Procedes from the sale of Rumor – both poets and publishers – go to the Syrian-Armenian Relief Fund. Three poems from Rumor have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
From early days you were the entrepreneur
hawking produce from the family fields
bartering in the playground to add
pennies to the communal pot.
You grew feasting on almonds, pomegranates
tomatoes warm with the sun – and on words;
devoured every book the small school possessed
began to gnaw at the professor’s stock.
Tanks, stones, missiles, murders marked your youth
then forced exile, the village and fields left behind;
more scraping for an existence but always
more reading, learning – you began to write.
Later your family seeped back across
the border; your childhood sweetheart
stayed, married and one dream slowly died.
You took an arranged bride.
*
With Saffariyya flattened you live your life
in Nazareth nearby and the village becomes
your myth, its stones, courtyards, people
the lodestone of all that you are.
Days full of duty, compromise, juggling, but
nights bathed in books, penning words.
Stories come first, of people and places; a past
you can’t lose, a present gripped with both hands.
Then an Eden of poems blossoms, a smelting
of bitter nuggets tempered with fragrance
of herbs, the chance laughter of a small child.
Its seeds spread wide, travel West.
At readings, the eloquence of your Arabic
needs no translation, nor the passion and feeling.
You handle the praise, pocket your glasses,
spread your broad hands on old knees
and mutter into your stubble
My happiness bears
no relation to happiness.
– Patricia Leighton, Bromsgrove, UK
[ Saffariyya was the birthplace of the Palestinian poet, Taha Muhammed Ali.
It was obliterated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. ]
A page of a copy c. 1503 of the Diwan-e Shams-e Tabriz-i.
Bring all those who are led astray, out of the desert…
when Rumi was a refugee fleeing the Mongol armies
from Balkh to Istanbul and Konya
his Sufi dancing dervishes, music of the forbidden dohl drum
his poetry of kindness, was for every heart and every breath—
it worked for Islam like water, not a hammer
where the Sufi knows human weakness
and the unauthorised drum beats like a heart beats
his words offer an opening for kindness—
let us not worry so much about who we think we are—
if you are not the enemy, then we make the best of it.
in kindness Albert Einstein wrote to Marie Curie
with advice on how to handle haters,
Mark Twain wrote to Helen Keller, Frida Kahlo to Georgia O’Keeffe,
all allowing kindness, working like water—
when we hear the hate preachers where we should be hearing love,
we still have Rumi, the ultimate refugee
.
Rumi (1207-17 December 1273) 13th C Persian poet, Islamic scholar and theologian, Sufi mystic. Born in Balkh, Afghanistan, buried in Konya, Turkey. When the Mongols invaded Central Asia around 1215 the family set out in caravan migrating and moving all over the area now containing Baghdad, Damascus, Mecca and finally settled in Anatolia (now Turkey) in 1228.
.
Rumi, an ascetic, believed passionately in the use of music, poetry, and dance as a path for reaching God, the Divine, hence the whirling dervishes developed into a ritual form, to be of service to the whole of creation without discrimination in beliefs, races, classes and nations.
this is no city of ultimate bliss*,
though the traffic is backed up to kingdom come
and the streets are a scrimmage, full and rough,
teeming with feral bits of hope and hunger
the people here are virtuous though,
ripe with love for one another, for Christ and music
hear the music winding, insinuating
and tumbling from la iglesiay las casas
the rents are morbidly obese, don’t you know?
though the wages and hours are skeletal
too often along B Street and downtown,
a man begs a cigarette, a woman begs for lunch
Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the
Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and
Filling their hands with your bounty? A Lover’s Call, Khalil Gibran
*****
esto no es una parte de la ciudad que está feliz
el tráfico es interminable y ruidoso y crudo
y las calles son una áspera, llena ~
lleno de esperanza salvaje y hambres profundas
la gente aquí es virtuoso, con buenos corazónes
madura con amor por el otro, para Cristo y la música
escuchar la música, que insinutes, una cascada ~
fluye de la iglesia y las casas
los alquileres son obesos mórbidos, ¿no lo sabes?
aunque los salarios y las horas son esquelético
a menudo a lo largo de la calle “B” y el centro de la ciudad
un hombre pide un cigarrillo, una mujer pide luncha
If I really screwed up on the translation and you’re burning to let me know, you can leave comment in Letters to the Editor. Thank you!
My autumnal words fell on the sidewalk of Love!
You looked like Autumn… I behaved like Spring…
I found you when I had lost you
In this autumn… of our spring.
I re-arranged my rustic colors
so Love might gain a new anthem
with fluid steps and no numb regrets,
forgotten overdue epiphanies,
lost stolen rainbows
and red echoes with tangerine taste.
In this autumn of our spring
with its golden trail and acoustic wings
the season paints its words as a grand finale
while your leaves whisper secrets to the World
and a puff of wind lingers our photographic memories
as journals left and long forgotten on the path’s end.
A stolen cry, a remembered loss of innocence,
as my desires hung on Sun’s shoulder,
I see a repainted canvas of us
with cycled memories on the hills’ canopy.
How sensual this autumn is!
Spiraling its space… tumbling its distance,
prolonged myself by flaming orange leaves.
During this autumn of our spring
my World turned into a September embrace,
October tinted your presence
With blossoming hues of green-orange undertones.
A dreamy dream… an autumnal fugue,
during lost Summer epopee,
and I breathed… with November pulse.
My soul’s crimson is ambered and rubied
And I feel… autumned…
I left my cinnamon spice to learn more about your beauty
the citrine embers of your eyes under the raindrops,
watched the cosmic dance on your skin, a whisper in time,
my temple of words still carry a forgotten white procession.
And love again… and again… dawns upon my future self
with rain scented winds, thrumming my life in your heart…
Words still scream the nuances of your disappearances
sailing across my punctuated flight…
Of so much yearning… I have sharpened more wings…
In this autumn of our spring, I will stumble no more
behind your voice… as Life cannot be half sung!…
A stolen cry… a remembered loss of innocence,
and I have learnt how to die… by living!…
I do not know what to regret anymore…
that I cannot reach you through our memories,
that an insane song cannot touch your soul,
or that you reversed yourself on the other side of Life?!…
I watched how spring drained from us
and not even a curved second could see anymore
the Miracle from us!…
Not even my own flying is vertical anymore
and I remained with my wings sealed
running barefoot on the shells of Time
on the look for that plenary Love
which you had promised along a sunset…
You stole the jewels of Time from beneath my eyelids…
just one white night struggled to reach the cloud’s temple
and I do not have shores to reach…. anymore…
I just got lost in the morning known by nobody!…
Seven stars on your face
Seven brown butterflies
I count them
And read in your eyes
The hieroglyphs of sorrow
This is who I am, you say
I carry my country
A wound and a rose
My memory is on my body
In these scars you love
In these hands, in this heart
Still lush with childhood
Behind curls of smoke
I watch you from a distance
And you contemplate the orange sky
Your soul brims over
With a glowing melancholy
I know it well
It is what transforms you
Into an citadel of silence
Only then I realise
The depth of your wound
This is how poetry is born
Green between your fingers
When you take refuge
In the shade of words
And solitude
I count them
Seven stars the night collects
For its celestial gallery
Only the scars remain
To remind me
Of who you are
our accounting department
has contacted you numerous times
regarding your account
for example
on all your birthdays
right after your graduation
from college
your first christmas alone
we even sent you postcards
during staff vacations
a policy not normal
but in your case
we made an exception
this is your final notice
but you need not respond
we have determined that you
were a bad investment
so we’re writing your debt off
this is just our way of saying
this
friendship
is over
don’t bother to call
the account
is closed
i had just
stopped by
aunt bea’s
and
was relating
a problem
i was having
with a friend
of mine
i said
she always wants
to pay
for things
i
just want
to have things
balanced
you know
what I mean
i could see
aunt bea’s eyebrows
rise
just above the borders
of her
reading glasses
oh
she said
that
accountant syndrome
where
relational spreadsheet columns
must always
zero out
my dear
friendship
is not about
balancing
the books
at the end
of the day
it’s about
love
It is you who clicks kitten heels on Fired Earth tiles,
thuds a spade into clay soil, clips fast a patio door,
who watches solitary over a willow tree, shadow casting?
When you catch your image in the sash glass, who do you see?
the girl who taught me to shell peas,
study dog-leafed pages of the Kama Sutra, why?
Is it you who shuddered at the thought,
caught smoking in your froth-white wedding dress?
What’s the measure of your mother-love,
of two sons on the sibling seesaw, how?
From what do you run, and how resist, and how forgive,
dream of on light summer nights, of what?
Of your bully bankrupt brother, your silly, skittish mother?
How deep the sighs, how slow to unwrap your son’s ivy-tight hold?
To relax, how, to be loose from head to toe, how,
from sorrow, which, what about the penny pinching days?
Why the elongated midnights of your middle years,
with which you shared tawny owl moons?
How does my twelve o’clock slip into your late afternoon?
If we were never friends, who might have taken my place?
You are strong firm granite.
Rough quarried, you still
hold your own edges.
Your fire goes deep, only
splinters of surface crystals
catching the fickle sun.
Weatherproof, all but invincible,
it would take carborundum
to smooth you out.
I know how; I lie over you,
a coverlet of soft moss,
wind-patterned grass.
We grow children:
delicate harebell,
tough scented heather,
bluest of blue speedwell.
They lift their heads, take in
storm, rain, sun, clear air.
Even knowing their parentage
their beauty, their differences,
strike me with awe.
Seven stars on your face
our accounting department
i had just
lovers aren’t always friends
The BeZine 