Aixa at the
It wasn't the man. It was the
garden
that seduced me. The breeze
glanced
off the white mountains and
blew
secret messages to me.
I looked at the pomegranate
blossoms
and they blushed.
The leaves on all the myrtles
shivered when I passed
and I suspected they felt what I felt.
Out of deep shade, oranges winked at me.
Flowers
turned to look. I felt adored.
Then the cypresses began to
speak to
me. I came to understand
every lift of
leaf and turn of limb quite
intimately.
Birds came to my fingers and nibbled there.
The sun stretched over
groves
of lemon trees.
The
sun suggested I’d be cooler
If I
took off one veil,
Then
another.
Fountains whispered.
from the pool in the
courtyard,
the water invited me in.
Don't be afraid, the water
said,
it won't hurt a bit,
and gently, gently slipped
over my body,
water fingers, water tongues.
Then I ate pomegranate. The
Juice stained my skin.
(for
Monika and Charles Correa)
I ask
if he can find the way to
the market the sweetest melon in
the world. He nods.
I
tasted it only once,
I
tell him, the one
my
friends brought back
by a
circuitous route,
in
transit halls and departure lounges
along
the way, growing harder
to
carry, heavier
and
heavier with juice.
It
was my birthday, so
I put
a candle in, brought
it
out after dinner to the table
where
it glowed like the gem
of
the east, the pearl of the world,
until
we cut it through
its
deep cold heart.
The
juice burst in our mouths
and
we became a part
of
its singing,
the
poem that ripened
inside
the skin.
The
mad mogul driver nods
again,
as if he hears and
understands.
He is
willing enough to try but
somehow
loses the way and
never
finds the city at the
crossroads of the world, never
reaches the river Zarafshan.
Women bathing
All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the
have been murmuring to us.
From fountains, from
watercourses,
from the secret pools in courtyards,
voices calling across centuries.
The
other women are
bathing
in the moonlight.
'Come,' they say, 'Come out
of the day's
heat, out of shaded rooms,
let's escape and
slip away, let the veils
fall, one by one.
Slide
into the pools that lie like mirrors of
the
sky, and let the moon wash over our
bodies.'
Bodies lush, generously-
hipped. Bodies like
pomegranates, bursting with
promises.
Translations
Can you translate my hands and
feet?
I am
the heat rising off
your
rooftop at midday.
Perhaps
you recognize
my pulse inside the song,
silence,
surprise,
passed along from mouth to
grain.
Boots
have beaten out a change
of
seasons, overtaken the
promise
of fruit trees and driven
back
the harvest. I have adapted
to
change.
With every choice lifted away
simplicity remains
Today I am alive. Today
we are still here.
Today my children
have eaten. Today there was
water. Praise God.
These things mean the same in
my language or in yours.
how will you translate my
mouth?
Close
I'll
tell you, I was like you once,
not knowing where to go or what to do. In
a
place where no one speaks your
tongue
you are a child again.
See,
go up from the dock, turn left, then
right, too many streets to tell, you
might find a countryman to ask.
It
may be hard to see, this time of night,
but when you reach the close go up the
stairs to the seamen's mission, top floor,
I think three flights.
Then it is our own country.
People from our village
giving proper food and rice,
sometimes, God willing, a
bed.
If you are fortunate enough
to sleep,
the bed becomes a charpoy
that takes you home
to just outside your door.
And
in the dawn, when you
wake,
balanced between light
and
shade,
there is dew on your body
and woodsmoke begins to fold
the stars
away.
The blue wall
The blue wall
has seen it all, but
is not cynical
Every time it blinks
something changes
as if a code has broken
to change it into another thing.
The soul shrinks and grows.
Window and mirror are alive
with sky.
Light blossoms out of distant
songs.
Cloth flutters off
the fleeting gold
that may be skin.
A woman comes close
to the brink
of revelation
and all this time the
blue wall thinks of
nothing
but
the taste of oranges
You wear two names like
scaffolding, your smile held
on
with bamboo sticks and
sellotape and string.
Salt swoops in on a sea-wind
and eats you bite by bite,
making sounds like seagulls.
Paint, plaster, brick, your
lovely polished skin gives in,
peels and cracks, but you fight
back, I am like that only, you
say, and toss your head.
White ants turn
your soul to diamond dust,
flood water slaps
at your glossy mouth, and you
smile back. You leave
doors open.
Absolution slides through the
walls of your heart.
you fall apart. you make
Yourself again, and shrug, I
am like that only.
Which
other city hands out
Two
different calling cards
One
with the left hand
The
other with the right?