ISFAHAN
“The world always decides”
Kingdom of Heaven (dir:
Ridley Scott)
It is hard
to see
the past
through
all the
smoke, mustard and
nerve gas
death mirrored from
mirror to
mirror
same old
lies and deceit
again and again
unless a door opens
and then another
rooms nested
within rooms, infinite regression
a theme in boxes
and dolls
but with you, Tabanda,
a door opened
and looking back
now I am at last able
to reconnect,
reconstruct through
all the disinformation
and outright lies
what was it Rumi, Omar
Khatami wrote
about beauty?
Surely, Tabanda when
they wrote their lines
they had you in mind.
The Sin
of Empire
born into a fading self-
important brutal Empire
close to camps and
fortresses founded
by Rome
(taught us
everything)
forgive me
for my ignorance
not realizing how deep
these assumptions
of superiority really go
how it is here
in the semantics, structured
in the very syntax
and you sitting in the classroom
smiling imbibing my
attempts to
teach instil my
mother tongue
so what if I told you
I have never travelled
to Isfahan
your lately bombed,
beautiful city
city whose name
is such a pleasure
for the mouth to speak
****
I am disappearing
off radar
see stars floating
across the sky
and my memory if you
my so-called impossibly demanding
jaw-droppingly beautiful
student from Isfahan
everything here
you can translate into Farsi
Persian time
cannot be said to be
a short system of time
I think of your war
your million dead
not a statistic, each
a remembered martyr
the Libra medallion about
your neck
glinting for a moment
in the hard
English sunshine
in the Fitzgerald translation
(his own reworking)
Sultan’s turret
caught in a noose of light
poems 2 die for 