Summer Travels...

'In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.'

-John Archibald Wheeler

Ghazal

I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time.
A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time.

Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hell-fire?
A former existence untold in real time ...

The one you would choose: Were you led then by him?
What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time?

Each syllable sucked under waves of our earth—
The funeral love comes to hold in real time!

They left him alive so that he could be lonely—
The god of small things is not consoled in real time.

Please afterwards empty my pockets of keys—
It’s hell in the city of gold in real time.

God’s angels again are—for Satan!—forlorn.
Salvation was bought but sin sold in real time.

And who is the terrorist, who the victim?
We’ll know if the country is polled in real time.

“Behind a door marked DANGER” are being unwound
the prayers my friend had enscrolled in real time.

The throat of the rearview and sliding down it
the Street of Farewell’s now unrolled in real time.

I heard the incessant dissolving of silk—
I felt my heart growing so old in real time.

Her heart must be ash where her body lies burned.
What hope lets your hands rake the cold in real time?

Now Friend, the Beloved has stolen your words—
Read slowly: The plot will unfold in real time.


-Agha Shahid Ali

El Jardin

Well, yes I was aware the Academy Awards were well over but I was rooting (tee!) for this documentary myself.

The Full Glass Now Empty

1932-2009

Not much more to say than reiterating what a deep loss Mr Updike's passing is to those of us who cherished his work and worth. His last New Yorker essay, The Full Glass is a poignant vestige.

Sump'in for Friday...

New Year...

ANOTHER full-orbed year hath waned to-day,

And set in the irrevocable past,

And headlong whirled long

Time's winged blast

My fluttering rose of youth is borne away: Ah rose once crimson with the blood of May,

A honeyed haunt where bees would break their fast,

I watch thy scattering petals flee aghast,

And all the flickering rose-lights turning grey.

______________________

Poor fool of life! plagued ever with thy vain Regrets and futile longings! were the years Not cups o'erbrimming still with gall and tears?

Let go thy puny personal joy and pain!

If youth with all its brief hope disappears,

To deathless hope we must be born again.


-Mathilde Blind