Joy’s carousel of vision quivers,
stretching her arms of imagination,
my ears are tickled by the din and screech of children
Jumping rope, tossing lucky’s,
and buzzing dilly dally between playground sundries.
Where once, the soles of our soul’s shoes,
Pressed in red earth dust, stirred
In love’s fleet and gentle turns
the hems of their khirqas, gray and frayed
So sinuously rising, falling, in sighs sublime
Poems, we maundering bards wept
In Rose petal tears,
That taste of blood moonshine.
Sun rays still dress the clouds in blushing rose,
as the specter of Sakki serves the mey at dusk,
Oh, so elegant a pour,
His intoxicating touch.
And the trees beyond the golshan
stopped their sway to listen
and a ghost dancing on the ridge line
Stopped his sway to listen.
There is an radiant abode in the ruins
Where memories shrink in the shadows
And catch fire, like wolves’ eyes in a forest black,
crackled, scaling cinder skin
Oh, unplayed oud
thy hollow weeps quietly,
in rosewood, cut and hewn, and tears within.
Our hands raw from working the garden,
thorns and briars take their share of blood
Yet flower petals remain in our aprons
Gathered in the rain of wind and effort and love
Let’s reach for those silken lucky’s and toss them in
on the court of laylay,
Joy’s carousel of vision quivers, and listens.
