Araliya

Explorers long ago
— or brigands, conquistadors or spice-bandits —
brought Plumerian gifts
beads for the heathens 
or a little piece of home 

We have since lost the name
and re-named:
The family Frangipani of Italy 
supplanted  the botanical monk Plumier 
but here in tropical lyricism 
the slip, supple grace inspired:
Ara-Liya, ‘that lass’

That lass
upon the branches
peeping over a wall
breaking curfews 
perfuming in subtleties unrecorded 

A flower correctly named 

Barefoot Testament

They say there are nodes
pinpoints on sole
each to an organ linked

Therapeutic 
it must be
so the practitioner says
in the physiology of belief 

Feet see what eyes do not
their deep conversations
with sand-grain and universe
are gathered by grass
which deftly slices 
sorts into beatitudes 
and like so many petals 
Carefully upon pavements lays 

The barefoot heart is raw
un-frilled ad uncluttered 
reads scriptures in silence
holds fraternal hands

Loves.

The Declaration of Grass

In the divine chronicles 
so-called and so-believed
the faithful transcribers 
placed The Word 
in elemental maps —
mountain they marked
rivers and other boundaries in flux 
duly peopled with king and coronation —
hosanna for conqueror 
footnote for infidel 
the rise of splendid cities
the inevitable crumbling to dust —
and upon it, in a corner, 
with ’Holy’ seal, marked


So bent, quashed and uprooted
by the engines of war 
the prophets never saw the grass

Neglected thus they conferred 
under monsoonal skies 
and around collaterals 
broken arrows, stained bandages  
charred footwear and nostalgia-shards
and decided for them and always:

‘For lovers and poets 
there will always be
and for them, and for their repose
as muse or papyrus  
so shall we.’ 

Sky

Someone in the long ago
in ecclesiastical shorthand
put god in his place
and the devil too:
banished evil 
to the bowels of the earth 
and the divine let loose 
in the amorphous atmospherical  

Someone in the long ago
in canonical zeal forgot
true residences 
of names, namer and named 

But from here on earth
a sky-slice can be seen by all
or by one or two
defining a straight line 
or two sides of a triangle   
carrying heart to heart
for a rendezvous nondescript
but nevertheless out of this world 

Peace

The benign Other of war
immemorial fixation of our tribe:
I have seen it gloss
the lips of tyrant and butcher 
in the aftermath of conquest 
and as badge and flag of objector 

But what of the world’s conundrums
battles over gold, oil and markets 
what of the indignant victim and insistent invader
when we declare war in the name of peace 
or declare peace as a synonym of belligerence 

what of lexicons 
battles over meaning
the raising of flags
over desolate uninhabitable land

when a moment
a word or glance that stays 
is peace enough?

Adjarian Slides

 

The Batumi of chess is peaceful 
the swords crossed are sharp 
inflict pain, obtain victory 
wounds that heal soon enough

The Batumi of Adjarian history
I’ve not perused enough
and perhaps unobtainable
in the long history of civilisational discontent
where armies known and nondescript 
cultures and religions in flux 
stumbled in the dense mountains
drowned in the subtropical seas 
leaving remnants in language and custom 


And all the while the people 
encaptured but resistant 
watched over blood-letting time 
tended their mandarins, hazelnuts and vineyards 
while unblinking corn surreptitiously evaded invader
and identity stood its ground like potatoes 
unseen and yet unbowed

In the midnights and dawns
the Black Sea has broken 
grand planetary pieces 
crafts over aeons, and deposits 
polished pebbles large enough 
to etch poetry illegibly beautiful 
small enough to toss and lose 
in relentless tides

And I wonder what transcripts 
were made, left behind, torn and destroyed
by the Ottomans and Russians
in their brigandry and self-righteousness
what embraces where rejected or welcomed 
and where the progeny of Guria and Imeriti live today,

More than all this, the names of the land
commonly known and loved and sworn by 
before the Greeks shipwrecked them all 
in the deep harbour of time
and how amidst cataclysms 
there once was, still is and will be 
an Adjara of autonomies unscripted.

For now, I lock in on the 64 squares
geographies of the here and now 

To Adjara, I will return:
the study of histories and hysteria must wait.

Bringing the warriors home

Mark Knopfler’s long fingers have grown
to engulfs civilizational divide,
tenacious fingernails pick
at a puppeteer’s dangling strings
 
An outdoor chess table stumbles uprooted
abandons a sidewalk forbidden to feet
and take root in the Town Hall
where 'miniatured' politicians
are re-dressed as kings, queens, bishops and knights
and are moved to crazy-weep
because they can’t find antidotes for their blues
and they’ve run out of the water of love  
 
Organic fertilisers, meanwhile, have decided:
‘Squares shall we nourish!’
And so the chess board grew and grew
squares multiplied
fell off the table, climbed the curtains;
the blacks nudged whites out of slumber
to make room for knights in tired armour
to take unannounced naps
along deliberate ranks, files and diagonals
cramping the kings and queens
and pushing pawns to agitation
 
‘Guns in!’ roared the Uncivilised General,
but booty did not leave;
the river carried the water of love
to resurrect bombed hospitals and schools
while a neck of brine self-choked
to bequeath to a suffocating world
de-dollarized oxygen
 
And Mark Knopfler’s fingers softly strummed
bringing all warriors home
to their valleys and their hills
solder irreconcilable allergies
put out unnecessary fires
glide through all straits, dire or otherwise,
and turn themselves into dervishes
who cannot breathe again
but will nevertheless sing and dance.

 

[This poem was included in an article titled 'The noise in the channel will be silenced by song,' published in the 'Daily News'] 

For Shiraz, Hafiz and The Beloved

I wake up from a stupor
melting in Dali’s clock
pouring over cacti and syllables

a letter from a frayed tomorrow
flaps its wings to the beat
of a terrified scarecrow’s gasps

and in a room that had in secret turned
a window marked West frames a sunrise
sprouting shocked beards and bowties
 
and directly opposite 
a doorway without door or wall
frames a sky and sea 

elliptical screams yearning for cough syrup
make do with triangular antidotes 
to purge remedies for unnamed poisons

a light-footed bull waves a cape 
breaks a matador into neat keys of a piano
that reluctantly whistle Hotel California
 
a vendor selling pickles in a church
redefines unnecessary wars as retch-residue 
of an intoxicated periodic table 

deflowered desalination plants
scurry among rubbled marble to weigh options:
Eliot’s wasteland or Whitman’s grass

and a half-eaten cream cracker 
offers a rat and a slice of cheese, chuckling,
‘with heart and hope empty the emptiness of existence’

America

(awaiting the second coming)

America of Grandfather Whitman 
is no less green and no more red 
a thousand years later,
the tribes that watered his gardens
visible and invisible now as then 
wear badges of insult and humiliation
pride and prejudice, in the silence 
of courtrooms stifled, in the decadent dance  
of black and white to white-out guilt,
and the dignified citizens he spawned
count surreptitiously sporadic victories
chew on the chagrin of centuries buried deep.

America that was and would become pluralised 
as vivid, varied and numerous as immigrant and native
so defined and transformed in redefinition,
the relevant political economies 
of the before, the now, 
the becoming and futures imagined 
Americas, no more poor no less wealthy
than the colonial cousins deemed lesser in the South
and the bedfellows of genocide up north, less but not as low,
Americas and Americans of that time 
were not museumed as were those lands and children
that were and came before. 
America of the eternal verities:
America of joy and sorrow
America of profit and loss
America of praise and blame
celebratory and notorious America and Americans 
as collective overall, 
as segment through cleaving 
historic and accidental 
with and without blood-letting.

Misnamed but not misbegotten America,
led by manicured arrogance 
objected to in word —
many and not so many —
by poets who dissected past,
navigated the present-complex 
mapped her countenance 
traced scars and tears
wrought in tectonic fracture, 
marked the petrified glacial horror 
and the meltdowns that bled
into lake and river —
love’s slow obliteration of history,
unearthed griefs discarded 
and the most ancient of the simplest joys,
are writing, as I write, a blueprint 
for a carburetor that can reboot a corroded engine, 
a redemptive radiator and filters too
made of the finest gauze, membranes and papyrus 
whose resilience was branded in unnecessary wars. 

First there were none 
and then there were thirteen
between the Mississippi River and Appalachian Mountains
a constitution there was 
from the Iroquois Confederacy wrought
copyrights were not waived 
they were made not to count;
first there were thirteen states
and then the bowels of the Founding Fathers spilled out
their entrails snaked their way South and West
there was annexation by gun 
and by rights arrogated upon herself —
                the Guano Act of 1856,
the alibi of accumulated excrement was milked 
and seabirds and bats never knew or cared 
the fertilizer of insatiable greed was strewn far and wide, 
excremental increment was foundational  
then and later and even now, 
and not just in the United States of Amnesia:
that which was Britain, France and Spain,
that which was Mexico
that which was nothing of marauders therein 
that which was commonly held and not priced 
that which was priceless in the philosophies that reigned 
were mapped, named, marked and stamped —
the greatest land theft in remembered history.  

America of the United States 
overruled dignity and civilisation 
subdued righteous and righteousness 
and still its enormous stomach hungered,
and so gluttony spawned blood-letting
one hundred and thirteen and counting 
brown, black, yellow and white blood 
obliterated the red of the native,
Prepared America,
America of Guano-Seek
America of Seizure 
America the Self-Righteous
America of Mis-Naming,
America in democracy’s bastardization,
Jittery America manufacturer of enemies 
America the Pawn of Weapon and Pharmaceutical 
Urinating  America, territory-marker, 
a beast with one hundred and twenty eight heads 
friend of despot, monarch, junta and zealot 
Forgetful America inks rules in languages she does not know.

Grandfather Whitman floats over leaves of grass
sharp blades lacerate and his words, drenched
with blood of unknown signature, and
addresses poets and freedom fighters
the patriarchal, the fratricidal, the theatrical and obsolete:
“America was not mine, I did not create nor own, 
America was and is a fantasy, it’s dimensions
are now surreptitiously shifted 
and now in bold brush-stroked arrogance redrawn,
America was a noun, when I recorded
her continental cleavages, examined the syrups
of her veins, and traced her monumental coporeality,
America is noun, still, improper and egregious,
a gun, a drone, poisonous gas, climate-wrecker, 
warlike, war-liking and warrior, idiomatic aberration,  
thrusted down throats of the untrusting,
sugar-coated happy pill for the naive,
metaphor for desecrated temples, past-tenser of cities and peoples;   
I am not America, but America claims me, claims 
the bold with the timid, grotesque with the handsome, 
claims the apple and the pie, sticks fingers in exotic dips
draws out profit, purchases anonymity, apathy and horror —
I can no longer say ‘growing pains, be patient’;
I am too long dead to awake or awaken 
but I hear there are one hundred Freedom Trains on their way,
I hear they can swim, I hear they can fly, I hear
that they are sealing military installations and confiscating weapons  
and disarming the misinforming with transcendental smiles,
I hear they come to rewrite all my words, and to them
I say: “welcome citizens of the world, I am honored.”