Shikwah

- 1964-

                      After Iqbal

Brother on the threshing floor, body like wheat,
and the red dirt that binds us, that nothing will release us
from. The fig tree, the date palm, the treacherous murder

unleashed into us now, the call blazing from vanity’s lungs,
jutting us to a future of mindless rain, wayward blizzards
of sand and snow. We were born to ward off this desolation

that grinds mountains into floss, bores into our books
for a whim that ordains blood, our blood
and others, our sisters, mothers. Without such fear

who will we be? What will we do without
this aching chord, without the bright morning that tore
the silver’s towers? Fire and the parched red dirt

that binds, the water stolen from our wells,
a black magic dredging the lower rungs of earth.
We dream of clover. The soft scent of young lambs

is the first letter of our alphabet, and the prophets
who tighten ropes around their waists to stifle hunger's
pangs, supplicant brows seeking light from earth’s core.

What will we do without the angel’s voice, a tide
sending us heavenward, a harmattan ushering us into the hell
of its lows. How can we live without such turbulent hope?

How can we accept the certainty of our quiet graves?
How can we stop waiting to witness the Lord’s face?
And what will we do without the hardened gaze?

The girls walk past, hair fluttering like commas
between poems of musk, a dream of touch like water
gently falling on smooth, warm stone.

What will we do without the anemones’ mournful dirge
stroking the dagger’s spine and the gelding’s nightmares.
Our hatred for our scoured hands, our love of the moment

when the sun drops only for our eyes? Who else will hear
birdsong as prayer, who will cleanse himself with the stroke
of sand? Who keeps the earth rotating with praise

of your name? And what will this spinning,
hurtling mean without our voices shouldering it
toward some ripe, sweetened pause?

What will you do, dear God, without us? How
will you fare, alone again in the empty vast, in the dark
of your creation, without us giving you your name?

Ecclesiastes

The trick is that you're willing to help them.
The rule is to sound like you're doing them a favor.

The rule is to create a commission system.
The trick is to get their number.

The trick is to make it personal:
No one in the world suffers like you.

The trick is that you're providing a service.
The rule is to keep the conversation going.

The rule is their parents were foolish,
their children are greedy or insane.

The rule is to make them feel they've come too late.
The trick is that you're willing to make exceptions.

The rule is to assume their parents abused them.
The trick is to sound like the one teacher they loved.

And when they say "too much,"
give them a plan.

And when they say "anger" or "rage" or "love,"
say "give me an example."

The rule is everyone is a gypsy now.
Everyone is searching for his tribe.

The rule is you don't care if they ever find it.
The trick is that they feel they can.

Lyric

Will answers be found
like seeds
planted among rows of song?

Will mouths recognize
the hunger
in their voices, all mouths in unison,

the ah in harmony, the way words
of hope are more
than truth when whispered?

Will we turn to each other and ask,
how long
has it been...how long since?

A world now, a world then
and each
is seeking a foothold, trying

to remember when we looked
at one another
and found—A world again—Surely

what we long for is at the wheel 
contending.

Surely, we'll soon hear 
its unearthly groan.

Airporter

Yardley, Pennsylvania, an expensive dump
and the van seats shake their broken bones.

Duty-free liquor and cigarettes,
the refineries and the harbor's cranes.

The moon digs its way out of the dirt.
The branches of an evergreen sway.

She's nice
the woman you don't love.

She kisses you hard and often
holding your face in her big hands.

Related Poems

The Gods of the Age

When they first
glimpsed Creation, it was only
                         half-lit.

Half-lit,
as in, only half-clear—
that night, they discerned
                                      and imagined.

In the mind’s waters,
a blurring,                   a refraction.
There, we were brimming,
we were multitudes,

but they saw our darkness
and named us Dark.

Like Any Messiah Taken Unaware by Death

1

Like any Messiah taken unaware by death
I saw my father                he was nodding to the palms, surrendered
To his sweet sad songs, was greeting
Happily the doves which settled on his shoulder

Alone     no shadow to soften his loneliness 
Alone the clouds    were praying to him

And I was calling    Father! Death is colder than a cup of water on my body, and
Fonder to me than sand

Father    the water surrounds me with longing and there is no time to shame the night 
With light, and melancholy with memories

2

My father, answering
What is gone     is gone

3

Prepare your exiles for the hard years, turn absence 
Into silver ribbons through your hair
Push your hands into the pockets of your shirt
Out comes your country 
Brimming ashes, fragment-crammed

4

Father     the directions have exhausted me

5

My father, saying  
What is gone     is gone

6

Distance has left me limp, father
Hunger is complete with me
And I am full with all the countries that threw me 
A babe into the river
This longing is no great thing to me
Earth switched on me, the skies
Are not the skies

No light to guard me     for distance betrays
No wind to bear me    for the clouds they age

Between my shadow and me / the butterflies    
Enchanted by the poems and the songs

7

My father, saying  
What is gone     is gone

8

Neither will the butterflies restore childhood to the water
Nor mother tongue loan you its ABC names
Nor dream pack your soul with clouds    Nor poetry, nor hopes

9

Like any Messiah taken unaware by death         My father
It was not a dream I saw, it was 
Reading the secret of drought on the palms
It was too much for poetry          but no great thing to death

I was calling to him: Father of wind
Father of water
Father of night
Father of hunger

                                      Father of death
                 Father of death
Father of death 

Surrendered to his sad yearning songs
Greeting the doves 
Which settled on his shoulders

Like any Messiah taken unaware by death

My father, saying
Be not afraid. Of mortal flesh is Man
Of mortal flesh is every son
Of Adam

What is gone     is gone

ojha : rituals

Ojhas are [medicine men, “the ones next to God,” religious ministers or priests who deal with the daily struggles of the village people]; this dynamic allows the village ojha to control the circulation of rumors, and he is the village member who has the power to trap daayans (witches). In some trials, the ojha reads grains of rice, burn marks on branches, and disturbances in the sand around his residence, for signs of a daayan.

certain beliefs precede his name & yet
he goes by many : dewar, bhagat,

priest. passive ear, the kind

of listener you’d give
your own face.

+

first, the village must [agree
that spirits exist]—some benevolent,
some deserving of fear. everyone

wants their universe
to have reason. so it must be
a woman who stole your portion

of rice, woman who smeared
your doorstep’s rangoli, woman
who looked sideways at your child.

+

give him your gossip & the ojha conjures
herbs to [appease the evil] : her raving,
innocent mouth. & by that token
what is truth. the other rumors,

too, could corroborate—that bullets
pass through, his body barely
there but for the holy
in his hands.

+

he chants her name with fingers
pushed into his ears. just the sound
of her bangles
undoes : a single woman

on a plot of land, unbecoming.
he reads her guilt [in grains
of rice, in the light of a lamp,
using a cup which moves

and identifies]. makes a circle
around himself. white sand
between him &
the world. it’s the dead hour.

now, he shouts, arms covered
in ants, sing.