The mirror demands from me The former face of mine. And my own? They too demand Proofs that I exist.

I have been wandering At the outskirts of pain, As time was keeping account On my face of it’s passing, As the bottles of wine were Drinking up books of poems.

And now when I return The gesture of laughter Seems to have forgotten me. This city seems to have forgotten me As I had forgotten it.

I come to the marketplace again Where as before everything is on Sale: wombs, shoes, hearts, Clothes, lives, utensils, songs, Carriages, friendships, guitars. Of this changing spectacle There is no god. Everyday here, For cheap prices, gods are sold. I have seen every buyer Being sold here in this market.

What will I gain here, for what Did others ever gain here? So I am departing again From this mirror that is demanding From me, my former face.

Translation from an Urdu ghazal

(After Georgia O’Keeffe’s ‘Yellow Hickory Leaves with Daisy’, shown above)

Late autumn born Into a universe of falling, Beginning with stars Falling away from each Other with their cargoes, And ending with this

Clutch of fall leaves. Which one of this are you, And which one am I? Half bitten away by time, We hold the color of amber Celebrants of what was once

Green, and will be so again. The earth in response to My questions (What is spirit Made of? What is the end Of all things?), answers with Simple beauty: a daisy with sun Flowering at its navel, you With distant eyes of smoky jade.

(for T)

From trackless paths of the seas I have come searching For the comet that must have Fallen to ground Somewhere on this shore.

Skin flecked with salt, muscles Covered with barnacles I have seen kings being burnt On their way to warrior heaven Above me. Secrets of the reefs, Sunk ships have settled In the creases of my skin.

Now I am neither man nor matter, I have become a seeker Wandering for signs, signals, Rumors, news, markers. I call her Nayantara As the ancients still remember her: Woman with a body of shells, Whose flower births aromas.

The starry eyed one, Who set my life adrift On ships of spinning clocks! Friend, have you heard, Even second hand or third, News of that corolla of light?

Notes:

After watching a corny movie Don Juan De Marco again (Why do I watch it if it is corny? Why do people drink? Why do people smoke?), for the fourth or fifth time, some words arose in memory. Words attached to my history, to past loves, and history yet to be born, loves yet to be celebrated, yet lived through. This woman, that these words blossom around (who as Nikos points outs in his brilliant ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ is just another aspect of the Universal Woman) then requires to be named, albeit temporarily. And tonight I call her ‘Nayantara’, very literally ‘Eyestar’. And for her, I hang this poem in this moonlight sky, so she that may find it, a crude flag, and know I exist.