Seated at a table in a smoky Bar, I trace the moist ring My beer mug has left behind On green leather buffed by Many anonymous elbows

A year I say to myself as My finger glides, between When we drank here first And now, when we drink again.

Soon we will have to walk out Into the night, into different times Soon we might become different selves, Perhaps unrecognizable beyond Different borders. Those whom I

Come to love leave - perhaps teaching Me to love even more. And those whom I Could have come to love leave as well, leaving Regret like smell of cigarette smoke in one's hair.

But tonight as I take the final sip from the mug The last and lasting thing I taste - often the only sweet Thing in an often bitter world - is love.

The body on finding itself entombed In a strange room tenses, the back arched Like a cat, the eyes seeing dim shapes dance On night walls – did the trout framed in Aluminum leap out? Was that the mantis Executing the disposable male after coupling? Or just a Winchester’s flash fired point blank?

The mind wakes to see rain tapping on the glass And the city spires taking sheet lighting. The heart, With it’s hardened ways, is perhaps offering A confession at an AA meeting or making Drunk-mad love to her again.

It is night and I am listening to Abida Parveen as it rains outside here at Chicago. And she sings the songs of Sufis -who sung these verses out in outbursts of madness and esctasy! And even my ache that comes when I find it hard to write poetry has vanished.

Here are some notes on Abida's album 'Mere Dil Se' (From My Heart) :

"Here are but a few half-opened flowers plucked from the rose garden of the Tariqab (mystic way). Here is grace, which has been bestowed by someone’s enriching glance, and I do not claim that it is for me to bestow the grace on others in turn. Rather, it is the expression of one’s humble allegiance to the Masters who live in a state of ecstacy." That is Sufi doyenne Begum Abida Parveen describing this album in which she has embraced poetry from Sufi and Sindhi mystics like Wasif Ali Wasif whose Main Nara-e-Mastana glorifies the moment when there is no difference between God and his follower.

According to Sufi belief, the state of ecstasy lies in between absorption into the divine (Jazb) and reaching out for the divine (Salook). The man who lives in a state of ecstasy finds himself in a mode where wonder and consciousness exist side by side, where madness intermingles with awareness.

And these are some rough translations I wrote down as I was listening to her renditions of Kabir:

If I sleep, I meet him in my dreams. If I wake, he fills my waking heart.

How strange is this comfortable world! It eats and sleeps. While Kabir, his servant, wakes and weeps!

Don't ask of the wise man his caste and creed. Instead beg him to grant you his knowledge.

With what face should I plead to him When I am ashamed of what I see in the mirror.