I believe only some or only few,
unless it’s just one, are ever
truly athirst for the deeper
Word, its welling sound,
of which Kabir spoke
so anxiously—and yet
stumbling by taking
for granted that the Source
must be He and that He
is the Formless Form
and not a cosmic Yang,
that is, a Femme, a Muse,
without whom any Greek
poet would have been dumb.
What nectar, o what neck,
To be kissed and to be pecked
Where aromas lay a gentle trail
For your lips to glide or dwell!
And on your way along the curve,
Her downy ornament, a shock of hair,
Waves you further in—to the final
Verge and sill—by the scented air!
Are we in an orchard now or has
A wag of some enchanting wand
Changed the hour to an instant May
With a floral anadem of shimmer
on her bending head as she imbues
Her whole in the lights of bloom?
Both lotus and love command
the same: “Look and see!”
From that Word the lotus
to the world has sprung,
after Kabir I sing and cant.
For the morning love of mine
got a burgeon for her mouth
folding pistils amid petals,
the finest and most delectable
vintage hatching down inside.
To be gilded, honeyed, spiced
by a sunshine and its pollen dust.
From that Word a whole new world
and opus of her lotus have just come.
By the fainting descant of the drunken
eyes as they blaze and roll and glisten.
Isn’t immortality nothing else
than a realization of a living soul?
Music and rhythm in which souls
Are drawn and draped—
For mortals even on this earth
Is a breath that stays a breath
By which life itself would want
To have been kissed and held
Well-known, born, and matched
With her one true kin and kind
That if being sung and voiced
Past the marring bars of void
And shade-casting death.
Oh, yes, the universe does need
Such hearts where such one poesy
And beauty are the ambrosial guests.
Love, that’s the clef one’s fated path,
going way back from the past,
had placed with Gods on the staff
to mark how high or how low
soul might fall or fly.
Not that often with that beauty and such grace
A simple hairdo does fall and flow and frame
So well a radiance and aura of a thinking face,
Running in two whirling rivulets down the chest
Where, suddenly, these waterfalls she combed
Seemed to find a rest, even if just gently vexed,
By being held at standstill only by the angled tips,
Becoming on the way a new awe and wonderment
Of two paths there and back again or two columns
Egyptian used to force apart or reconnect—for those
Who will be judged and blessed—Heaven and Earth,
All what’s high with what’s below in one felicific act
When breathless turns even an Isidian sculpted bust
In the face of her neophyte’s yielding, buckling knees.
Imagine where salt and pepper
Were a speech, a tongue, a flame,
A new yin and a novel yang—
Occulting the neck behind
With strokes of simple art
That gives the face more light,
Redolent of the August sun
Over leas of molten wheat
Or of the palomino snow,
Just sketched in front of eyes
Into spells of calligraphic lines
That storm and swarm the heart
With inking glows and sparks—
An eyeful rich in shocking darts.
