(By Mahavesh Savet)

At Such a Time You’ll Come

I fear that time
when patience will no more be mine
when brittle hope will have been blown away,
it’s kindness gone,
when the wind will have scattered me
and my eyes will have strayed from the path–O!
if no door opens to me then, not one–
I will know for sure it is that time
when you will come again.

Bear This in Mind

When you pass by
a heap of rotting rats
bear this in mind:
they might not all be dead.
They might just be lying there,
lying and pretending.
Because no one bothers
the dead round here.

Fire
They set fire to all you had:
each flame transformed
into a bright anemone of blood.
They pierce you through and shot
each arrow owned by old Farhad.
But when the sweet juice stained
the ground, it flowed from Shirin’s vein.
Lights Out
Weary but wakeful, feverish but still
fixed on the evasive bulb that winks on the wall,
thinking surely it’s time for lights out,
longing for darkness, for the total black-out.

Trapped in distress, caught in this bad dream,

the dust under my feet untouchable as shame,
flat on the cold ground, a span for a bed,
lying side by side, with a blanket on my head.

And the female guards shift, keeping vigil till dawn,

eyes moving everywhere, watching everyone,
sounds of the rosary, the round of muttered words,
fish lips moving, the glance of a preying bird.

Till another hour passes in friendly chat,

in soft talk of secrets or a sudden spat,
with some snoring, others wheezing
some whispering, rustling, sneezing—
filling the space with coughs and groans,
suffocated sobs, incessant moans—

You can’t see the sorrow after lights out.

I long for the dark, the total black-out.
(By Ian Hamilton)

Biography
Who turned the page? When I went out
Last night, his Life was left wide-open,
Half-way through, in lamplight on my desk:
The Middle years.
Now look at him. Who turned the page?

Epitaph
The scent of old roses and tobacco
Takes me back.
It’s almost twenty years
Since I last saw you
And our half-hearted love affair goes on.

You left me this:

A hand, half-open, motionless
On a green counterpane.
Enough to build
A few melancholy poems on.

If I had touched you then

One of us might have survived.

In Dreams
To live like this:
One hand in yours, the other
Murderously cold; one eye
Pretending to watch over you,
The other blind.
We live in dreams:
These sentimental afternoons,
These silent vows,
How we would starve without them.
Home
This weather won’t let up. Above our heads
The houses lean upon each other’s backs
And suffer the dark sleet that lashes them
Downhill. One window is alight.

‘That’s where I live.’ My father’s sleepless eye

Is burning down on us. The ice
That catches in your hair melts on my tongue.

Poet
‘Light fails; the world sucks on the winter dark
And everywhere
Huge cities are surrendering their ghosts…’
The poet, listening for other lives
Like his, begins again: ‘And it is all
Folly…’

The Silence

You walk ahead of me. The silence stands

On these white fields for miles at either side
And on the frozen lake. The trees
That file beside us can almost touch
Across our path. They are like hands
troubled by some forgotten prayer:
They are sustained by their burdenthe last m
Of silence. It is substantial
And stretches between us now. Your words,
Reverberating on it, as the branch you throw
Strikes angrily across the banks of snow
To disappear, are wasted.
The Visit
They’ve let me walk with you
As far as this high wall. The placid smiles
Of our new friends, the old incurables,
Pursue us lovingly.
Their boyish, suntanned heads,
Their ancient arms
Outstretched, belong to you.

Although your head still burns

Your hands remember me.

Azan by Willy Oppenheim

This is the good light,
the late light,
the grey-blue dark and cold,
the stone walls and snow
and songs announcing prayer.
This is the narrow frozen path
and the winter we belong to.

Coming back last night

I saw snowy road in headlights
and our silent earth from space
and wanted only to do no hurt.
To take it back,
to send a message
of my prostration.

Instead I returned to the smoke

and woodstove and darkened room
where two days before I watched a girl
bleed out under blankets:
pale face, held hands,
sisters spilling tears
and crying her name.
Dark eyes meeting mine.
The limp body brought out to daylight,
the waiting jeep, dirty hospital down-valley.
I come back to say she will live,
and her mother sings fingers to forehead,
gives praise I accept but don’t deserve.

And so I take what is given.

I look out at old rivers
and what valleys they’ve cut
and at night I see moon through clouds
and undress and lay down
as if it is the only prayer I know to offer,
as if pulling up cold blankets
is the best and last thing I’ll ever do.