The goldsmith's daughter

- After Rumi


The goldsmith's daughter, dearly loved,
Did not love herself.

But one man failed to love her
And she, marveling and relieved, loved him.

She went to his door
And knocked. He was brewing tea
And she was jealous that it might burn his lips
Where she wished to sear herself.

He said,
"Who's at the door?"
She said,
"I can no longer see my face, please look for yourself"

He said,
"My door is no mirror, and it has no peep-hole"
She had seen enough of mirrors, wanted no more of peep-holes.
She said,
"I am a girl"

He said
"what do you want?"
She said
"To be whole"

"What do you bring?"
"My loss"

"What have you lost?"
"This that you see."

He said,
"Such claims require a witness"
She said
"This longing, these tears"

He said
"Credible witnesses"
She pointed out
"I am still crying"

He laughed
"Who puts the tears in your eyes?"
She said
"The same who draws them out again"

How to clean the eyes? Fill them up.
How to cure the self? Send me back to you.

Of you, my Kung Fu Master

Glasses off,
you would look as you were:
A farmer’s grown son
A strong child of China.

You would say ‘Your eyes, they must look like this’
But mine are not so dark, you know.

You rode a girl’s upright bike.
I would for you rise at 6
And you would be angled against the bath-house wall
Pulling your tight morning calf-muscles
Waiting coldly for my coming.

You always wore the same sweater that winter.
We would slip on the icy tiles, and eat hot pork baps before class.

Spring, you asked me why I was so happy
And it was because I had dreamed that we ran,
Flying, really, the dust of comets on our heels.
Somewhere beside me, you asked if I was ok,
And I laughingly swelled in delight at my legs,
And at you, my fearless leader,
At the sunlight slanting, sparkling, on us.
In life, you never spoke to me that way.

Summer, I would practice in the cool nights
Alone on the badminton court, but for the bats.
Eyes closed, I would occupy you,
Hear the rustle of your coat
Finding your movements in the arcs of my hands.

Rehearsing your coldness
I would miss you less.

Your skin isn't smooth

Your skin isn’t smooth. It’s white sky and peppered birds.
The trees in it hung with black gloves and red talismans,
Your carried luck, your sharper guide.

We are not lovers
But you have drawn on my face with your fingers these past mornings, so
I try to press yours with my darker autumn colours:

I am not your paperpaste wings, and you are not my sparrowhawk
(Although
seated next to me
you say (you look down) you might fly, and I,
all eyes and no breath
am also thinking you might)

We run the fields separately
And return to each other bashful:
Hoping it will be enough.

I wrote you a haiku:

I hold your wrists, locked,
Unlocked, us both ensnared
By their faultless red.

I won’t show you. We might be lovers, one day.
For now I will content myself
Plucking at the stars,
Putting them in your already-glowing hands.

If I was to locate 'I'

- After Rumi


If I was to locate 'I'
It would be entered between these eyes, lodged perhaps
in the nasal bones, or otherwise
in the cave of this mouth, rubbed back
Up into the stem of this brain
and further
Into the brain Proper, which crackles and pops
like electric breakfast cereal.

But sometimes I is wandering.
Today. Running by the canal. I shifts
out in blobby space and swings holding, bedazzled,
onto the water
which is entirely light.
The entire canal and the light
is now I's phantom limb,
and for a moment it headlocks North London.
Playful.

Later I is busy tweaking in the swollen thighs.

Over the cup of tea the face is warm and I floats there
And annoyed shoves at the steam
Demanding:
Why is I tied to this and that?
Is I in the flakes that drop off this skin?
Is I in the bumps of air that trundle from this mouth?
Whoever put this I here, will have to take it away again.

And then the infant, face tight as fist:
Her I must be in the lungs
And, sometimes, in each toe stretched
In every direction as far as it may go
I, I, I, mine, me.

The infant saying:
Stop making all those choices.
I have always been here, I know that
And anyway if someone brought me here
they are mine too.