Why I love Scheherazade
by Varun Ramrakhiani
Of old old sands
I know nothing
Of the coursing channel
The partitions olden made
And my father's children
I know nothing
Of the seven hanging poems
Like prehistoric eggs
And their wailing and emptiness
Their summons of desire
For the cold acts of contemplation
I know nothing
Of all the forced sounds
And the chambers to which they lead
Their dreams of easts beyond easts
The adventures imagined in reverie
I know nothing
Of the beggar his watches and stump
The idols carved inside his home
His speeches frantic like a winding fire
The banks where he lay and cried
I know nothing
Of my home whose pictures I have
The people and their fate accorded
The goodness of their obscurity
Their glad sameness
I know nothing
Of places far better
I know nothing