WHERE INTUITIVE BLOOD PIGMENT COMES FROM…
a short history of me
It all began,
(if like a fisherman
you can hurl a net
behind you, beyond
days and nights of untaught histories,
and maybe haul in
a deep sleep catch
of what you think never was —
the very first wooden wheel
or baked brick,
well and cistern,)
you’ll understand
where I began.
it all began with
indecipherable pictograms
dreamt up by ancients,
imprinted on clay tablets, and
clay goddesses, priests,
and naked dancing girls
— all abandoned to dust and time.
They hover around me,
little ghost mysteries
which I cannot solve but carry
around inside, outside,
over mountains
across indigo waters.
A road map, you might call them.
Lost! so lost although stars
pushed and pulled
spun themselves into faraway beacons…
And
I found
Ashoka’s austere fire, it
touched my humble lamp that
cast mellow shadows
on the foreplay of my life,
coaxed forth limbs, warmed tendrils
they carved
separate silent passages down
roots of Gautama’s
mystical green giants
and rested.
Within me orchestrations
clashed on the tip of
Saladin’s sword, swooned
to the dance of dervishes.
Fattened on a sense of identity,
I imagine industrious
ancestors weave my future
see it take form…
Then,
I happened upon
shingles of dim terra cotta —
Decayed glory of an Englishman’s
rusted church in a sepulchral Cantonment —
And a butterfly swarm of jeweled words fell about me!
Words
like startled doves,
flashing scimitars
And lanceolate shimmers
pierced my mind,
gave me poetry to cherish,
unconditionally,
Whilst
private agonies granted
me tactile blood with
which to sing
impassioned love songs,
doleful requiems, hushed lullabies —
Intuitive blood pigment to
delineate reasons why apples
and oranges are round.
Farida Haque
