Poems – Mimi Khalvati

Rubaiyat

for Telajune

Beyond the view of crossroads ringed with breath
her bed appears, the old-rose covers death
has smoothed and stilled; her fingers lie inert,
her nail-file lies beside her in its sheath.

The morning’s work over, her final chore
was ‘breaking up the sugar’ just before
siesta, sitting crosslegged on the carpet,
her slippers lying neatly by the door.

The image of her room behind the pane,
though lost as the winding road shifts its plane,
returns on every straight, like signatures
we trace on glass, forget and find again.

I have inherited her tools: her anvil,
her axe, her old scrolled mat, but not her skill;
and who would choose to chip at sugar-blocks
when sugar-cubes are boxed beside the till?

The scent of lilacs from the road reminds me
of my own garden: a neighbouring tree
grows near the fence. At night its clusters loom
like lantern-moons, pearly-white, unearthly.

I don’t mind that the lilac’s roots aren’t mine.
Its boughs are, and its blooms. It curves its spine
towards my soil and litters it with dying
stars: deadheads I gather up like jasmine.

My grandmother would rise and take my arm,
then sifting through the petals in her palm
would place in mine the whitest of them all:
‘Salaam, dokhtare-mahe-man, salaam!’

‘Salaam, my daughter-lovely-as-the-moon!
‘ Would that the world could see me, Telajune,
through your eyes! Or that I could see a world
that takes such care to tend what fades so soon.

from In White Ink © 1991
..

from Entries on Light

Scales are evenly
weighed, inside
outside. Light is
evenly poised
− blur to the gold
glare to the blue −
it’s twilight.
In two minds.
Who can read by
a lamp, focus
land’s outline?
But blue soon
sinks and gold
rises. Who
can stay the balance
if light can’t?

Villanelle

No one is there for you. Don’t call, don’t cry.
No one is in. No flurry in the air.
Outside your room are floors and doors and sky.

Clocks speeded, slowed, not for you to question why,
tick on. Trust them. Be good, behave. Don’t stare.
No one is there for you. Don’t call, don’t cry.

Cries have their echoes, echoes only fly
back to their pillows, flocking back from where
outside your room are floors and doors and sky.

Imagine daylight. Daylight doesn’t lie.
Fool with your shadows. Tell you nothing’s there,
no one is there for you. Don’t call, don’t cry.

But daylight doesn’t last. Today’s came by
to teach you the dimensions of despair.
Outside your room are floors and doors and sky.

Learn, when in turn they turn to you, to sigh
and say: You’re right, I know, life isn’t fair.
No one is there for you. Don’t call, don’t cry.
Outside your room are floors and doors and sky.

Ghazal

after Hafez

However large earth’s garden, mine’s enough.
One rose and the shade of a vine’s enough.

I don’t want more wealth, I don’t need more dross.
The grape has its bloom and it shines enough.

Why ask for the moon? The moon’s in your cup,
a beggar, a tramp, for whom wine’s enough.

Look at the stream as it winds out of sight.
One glance, one glimpse of a chine’s enough.

Like the sun in bazaars, streaming in shafts,
any slant on the grand design’s enough.

When you’re here, my love, what more could I want?
Just mentioning love in a line’s enough.

Heaven can wait. To have found, heaven knows,
a bed and a roof so divine’s enough.

I’ve no grounds for complaint. As Hafez says,
isn’t a ghazal that he signs enough?

Ghazal: It’s Heartache

When you wake to jitters every day, it’s heartache.
Ignore it, explore it, either way, it’s heartache.

Youth’s a map you can never refold,
from Yokohama to Hudson Bay, it’s heartache.

Follow the piper, lost on the road,
whistle the tune that led him astray: it’s heartache.

Stop at the roadside, name each flower,
the loveliness that will always stay: it’s heartache.

Why do nightingales sing in the dark?
Ask the radif, it will only say ‘it’s heartache’.

Let khalvati, ‘a quiet retreat’,
close my ghazal and heal as it may its heartache.

What it was

It was the pool and the blue umbrellas,
blue awning. It was the blue and white

lifesize chess set on the terrace, wall of jasmine.
It was the persimmon and palm side by side

like two wise prophets and the view that dipped
then rose, the swallows that turned the valley.

It was the machinery of the old olive press,
the silences and the voices in them calling.

It was the water talking. It was the woman
reading with her head propped, wearing glasses.

It was the logpile under the overhanging staircase,
mist and the mountains we took for granted.

It was the blue-humped hose and the living wasps
swimming on the surface. It was the chimneys.

It was sleep. It was not having a mother,
neither father nor mother to comfort me.

The Soul Travels on Horseback

and the road is beset with obstacles and thorns.
But let it take its time for I have hours and hours to wait

here, snowbound in Lisbon, glad of this sunlit café
outside Departures, for an evening flight to Heathrow.

Being my soul’s steed, I should like to know its name
and breed – a Marwari of India, Barb of North Africa,

the Akhal-Teke of Western Asia or a Turkoman,
now extinct? Is it the burnt chestnut colour of the ant,

grey as a Bedouin wind, the four winds that made it?
O Drinker of the Wind, I travel by air, sea, land

and wherever I am, there you are behind my back
pounding the cloud streets, trailing banners of cirrus

or as Platero once did, from fear or chill, hoofing a stream,
breaking the moon into a swarm of clear, crystal roses.

No, no matter your thirst, ride swiftly, mare, stallion,
mother, father, for without you I feel forever homesick.

Afterwardness

An eleven-year-old boy from Aleppo
whose eyes hold only things no longer there
– a citadel, a moat, safe rooms of shadow,
‘afterwardness’ in his thousand yard stare –

years later, decades even, might turn around
to see, through the long tunnel of that gaze,
a yard, a pond, and pine trees that surround
as in a chaharbagh, four branching pathways.

Where do memories hide? the pine trees sing.
In language of course, the four pathways reply.
What if the words be lost? the pine trees sigh.

Lost, the echo comes, lost like me in air.
Then sing, the pathways answer, sigh and sing
for the echo, for nothing, no-one, nowhere.