Poetry II

It has been three years. Here are two poems.

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I

The locals call Muttrah Souq the market of darkness. It’s an ancient bazaar situated on a well-travelled seaport adjacent to Muscat harbour. I was there in December 2017, thinking about whether I was experiencing ‘The East’ in the same patronising way that Orientalists did, and how tragic it was that a region full of age-old splendour could now be plagued by conflict.

The dissociation I felt is reflected in the two-part structure of the poem, and my isolated position at the edge of two worlds is a guiding motif. There’s a line I interpolate from Arthur Miller’s ‘A View From the Bridge’ which summarises the perspective: “But this is Red Hook, not Sicily. This is the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge. This is the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world.”

At a basic level, ‘Our Orient’ is about isolation and paradox. The title refers to our viewpoint (i.e., to be oriented) and an inspiring text, Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’.

***

Our Orient

Meet me by that fruited crescent

on the unmilked coast of Muttrah,

where sages whisper and polish opals,

while boys deseed olives from the valley

for the bazaar that teems on the steppes,

so the orphans are graced with alms

when dusk paints away the sawm,

see them tuck their kin asleep

into those honeyed enclaves

as tribesmen once did.

Meet me by that sanded fort in Nizwa,

where the custodians once left their post,

unguarded, five times, like merchants

in that crested corniche. Watch them

oil their sabers; burn frankincense;

wrap their hands with gauze

under celestial limelight,

to faithfully preserve

our pearled peninsula.

Meet me where the mystics swirl

in velvet dunes of parables past,

where cobras melt into powdered glass,

and leathered Bedouins lead their herds

to the shade of palms for rest,

and sit cross-legged by gas-lamps

to recite all ninety-nine

of scriptures eternal.

Meet me at that immortal spring,

where each young tear of Ishmael

cut into the heart of his mother,

as she cried sore for oases

while the sprites watched,

as she wailed through the coals

to sanctify sevenfold,

the cause of our pilgrimage.

Meet me on this saffron gulf.

This is the city that faces the bay

on the seaward side of Arabia.

This is no white gullet for tonnage.

This is an orb of rites nomadic,

of trade and tranced recitation

and prostration to the merciful

for entry of the learned few.

Verily, meet me to bear witness!

These are the hanging gardens,

Do you see your Syrian children hang?

They float as dead urchins in an amniotic sea,

These are the secrets of Babylon unlocked,

Do you see your crafted Hellenistic tiers?

Of infant corpses heaped in debris,

Where the empire breaks into blood and magazines.

Meet me to hear the scabbed daughters sing

in sheds and camps and asylums,

where familial tears ruck on raw floors

for their tombs are left vacant for the creator to let,

and the rattle of toys is now the pitter-patter of guns,

and the food is not cooked but collected,

and lives are lain from tip to tip

to form our reddened Gaza strip.

Meet me in Taiz or Al Hudaydah,

governorates founded by agrarian kings,

where the rations fade as quick as pulses,

where the agarwooded air is perfumed

with the unfamiliar clog of cholera,

and the ‘coalitions and funding and aid’

are brittle slogans that burst on the tongues

of parents who kneel and face the floor

in their daily discharge of hasty orisons.

Meet me to know this forkèd plague,

a hunting ground for leaders and troops

Who wrenched away our swords and jewels,

mouthfuls from the hungry, crutches from the poor,

Who made our Orient, a cesspool, a rotting chest

and guided the hand of Iblis as they were guided too

to the necks of innocent boys and girls who knew,

with a maturity well beyond their tender years,

that this was no war against flesh;

It was our heritage they sought 

to execute.   

***

II

A stab at traditional subject matter, ‘Tea and Cof’ was written to capture nostalgic and charming experiences; some flowers, a meeting at midnight, soft rain on a rooftop. Such 'highlights', which act as anchors for memories, are often subconsciously redefined into lovesick dreams. The rose-tinted past and the ever-nearing future meet together in this poem, the latter mirroring the former, to form a dreamlike continuum. The subject of fancy is ephemeral, defined by a nature which is equally idiosyncratic and indistinctive. The reader focuses on her and the anchors, perhaps losing sight of reality and truth.

Mostly written in iambic pentameter, the structure treads on safe ground. 

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Tea and Cof

She finished all her tea before we left

It was a pot of tea and not a cup,

Why did she ask for English breakfast tea?

I don’t think English breakfast warrants it

        And fuller drinks do better suit the rain.

She spoke of birded woodlands, Cambrian,

She turned all consonants to vowels and streams

She painted real—a faerie and her grot,

But who would ask for English breakfast tea?

It fogged the Persian pink set on her lips.

It rained both times we met on that parade,

Her embered coat had made the greyness melt

Her hair was much too wet to see through well

She looked at me through rain-drops near street-lights,

And in her eyes I saw a carefree self.

I saw our cabinet in twenty years

The one just past the stove and by the fridge,

Where she would lean, smile, watch me drowsily

Where I might reach inside for coffee grounds,

And glimpse her box of English breakfast tea

And think about those rainy days in youth,

        Those rainy days where I had

        felt no rain.