The Serpent of Nile Little finger like weeds caress, The oak’s log is the violent red, I be the guardian angel, broken pathos Of the crescent, -the orange window. Little poetess of dreams-, why ail My pleadings from eternity, my war Letting Alexander’s armies, devastate On return on my feet, I see bowed. Time’s ravages, they pick the annals To reveal, like from a fortune teller What hath passed, three thousand years Ago: so to learn, -a window to the future. There is no dearness, harnessing A rabbit’s innocence, for a steed’s gallop I am back from ‘thirty two wars’ of liberation, And your ascension to heaven, Remedios, The Beauty. You are still not the riot ‘The gentle torture of the wits’, you are Yet to be wired into words of harshness, Yet to learn ‘the way of the beloved’. They all strutted with a terrible desire to weep, And one’s broken head, exuded your aroma, Beyond the rite of death, into the streets Of living. While you bathed, with scorpions. They thought you eat earth-worms, And your nakedness is like the nakedness of A bird. They kept on sniffing like dogs, Such was the smell you left, like a rain-bathed tree. It took me to the moth eaten parchments, Heavy with moss, amidst nests of ants To lighten and see, and smell in the creamy light Of a glow-worm. Awashed, with vintage red; To catch the butterflies of your dreams, Yellow, to watch a purple rain, and A white-only rainbow, to travel, with tired steps Before the last exit, the curl of your hair is the serpent of Nile. -To Porshyee Burton, on her making a painting inspired by my poetry. Sadiqullah Khan Islamabad January 16. 2014. Abstract painting by me, by Portia Burton @ Portia Burton
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 07:20:45 +0000
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