When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
......
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
......
I prefer red chile over my eggs
and potatoes for breakfast.
Red chile ristras decorate my door,
dry on my roof, and hang from eaves.
They lend open-air vegetable stands
historical grandeur, and gently swing
with an air of festive welcome.
I can hear them talking in the wind,
haggard, yellowing, crisp, rasping
tongues of old men, licking the breeze.
......
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created,
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
......
Veiling, barely, his dread
Beauty and its blaze,
An angel sets warm bread
and cool milk at my place.
His eyelids make the sign
Of prayer; I lower mine,
Words interleaving vision:
--Calm, calm, be ever calm!
Feel the whole weight a palm
Bears upright in profusion.
......
She looked into the mirror but she couldn’t see herself
The tears in her eyes blurred the black
The black of her kohl which streamed down her face
And the black of the hijab they made her wear
The exultant purdah won again; they let him win, again
Why didn’t they understand when she told them
That it smothered her and made her feel small
That she didn’t want to be different or be the same
That God wouldn’t want her to be so troubled
Just because of a black piece of cloth and he would
......
She extracts crimson
stigmas from purple flower,
hope from droughty years.
Ladies' scents
so nice everywhere,
midst the hats.
Every style
making their unique statement,
like garden blossoms!
Where women aren't quite women
They're Menstruating folk,
Their gender simply Human,
The world gone truly woke.
Grasping for atonement,
The art of double speak,
The fancy of the moment
Our words they cutely tweak.
......
I saw a stranger in the woods,
Who sprinted ere me,
With her lucent brown stick,
And behind her, there was a bee.
She was singing a lay,
That pulled every creature,
And I noticed her stick,
The lucent was of magic.
......