MOROCCO ON MY MIND

Trying to dredge up energy these days is a feat beyond me, and yet knowing this is the hālat of most of us, keeps me going. We are all a little brain rotted by Instagram - ooh but it is so delicious and appealing and who can say no to fast food when fatigued? Healthy food requires a little preparation, some care and attention, a neat and concentrated mind. I am just about keeping the ants at bay, Mum is busy keeping the kitchen clear of fruit flies, and the summer heat and drought lost us our cherry and our silver birch. Somehow in the midst of caring for Dad, waiting for various scans to check on this and that aspect of being a chronically ill woman in the middle of her life, I flew to Morocco to commune with camels and seagulls and brighter colours than can be found in an English fenland village. 

I clothed myself in kaftans, was fed milk and honey by a Gnawa elder, studied Kabbalah and Sufi mysticism at the feet of my friends and teachers on a divine decolonial sacred feminine retreat and then shopped for objects that broke and cracked in my bag - but no matter. I was grateful for the breaks that freed my washing machine mind, which was circling fatigue and despair - the kind that settles on us all periodically, but particularly on the artist who hasn’t made a proper finished thing in a while. Onwards to the books that await more than mere beginnings and ideation… onwards to autumn leaves and staving off the winter chill until we are good and ready for her…

 

NAÏVETÉ (HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME)

Sometimes it tires me, this being a poet. This being a scholar, a reader, a thinker, a dreamer. Some of us get paid for it along the way, some of us don’t. And why would we pay you, asks the world sternly?? What. Do. You. Do?

Well, I sigh… I sigh a lot. I don’t raise my woebegone hand to my weary forehead while I sigh, but I do sigh. I got into trouble for sighing long years ago, when I was fifteen and country grieving, grandfather grieving… in a new country, whose countrymen, strangely, considering our four hundred year long history together, didn’t seem to know anything about mine!

And that’s just the India element. Never mind the Arab and Persian ancestry, which is not mere ancestry, it is embodied presence. Today I thought a thing: I may have written a thousand poems in my life. If only poems were given the weight of novels or songs, no one would consider me a wastrel, a ‘what do you do with your life?’ sort of person, would they? A ‘but can you make money from/ how much do you make?’ question that hangs over the poet trying to poet in a world with no time for poetry except at funerals, when all there is left is poetry. Until the conductor of the orchestra moves on.

Into this sighing poeting grieving life of pseudo intellectualism (I am not a doctor or even a doctoral candidate), come places of refuge. In my case, refuge used to be books - to write in and to read - and then degrees - the essays that made up each one, and then this blog, begun seventeen years ago. And between then and now, the storms of social media and the pandemic and all along, the ticking of the clock of tech.  

Art saves us all, but when art takes its toll of the artist, it is only ever nature that comes to the rescue. Though the land is parched and scorched across the earth, the colours, the scents, the 'flora and fauna' to quote a phrase my brother recently threw in, is our true resting place. 

Have you read ‘How I Became A Tree’ by Sumana Roy? I attended a lecture by her on Disobedient Essays… disobedience is something I am a little too good at… ah well! One can attempt to be better… I just celebrated my birthday. The old year and I hath parted ways, onwards (and inwards) to the new!

HANSEL ON A LEAD

My uncle with Hansel

Couldn't find a picture with Hansel at their feet, but he was there!

Papa, 

everyone you love will be there.

I tell you this, not because I want

to comfort you, but because I know

it is true. I felt them;

they were waiting, excitedly, 

embodying patience

and the immediacy of joy. 

I am theirs as much as I am yours - 

and surely, because you have lived 

twice as long as I, 

the abundance of those awaiting you 

will far exceed mine. 

Papa,

everyone who loves you will be there.

You don’t believe me?

Ok, let’s try it this way - remember

when Hansel sat between you and Ma

on your wedding day? 

A dog is a blessing, a dog can be a guide

even in the afterlife.

Imagine, then, Hansel awaiting you

at the gates. Imagine Nina Simone

singing I wish I knew how it would

feel to be free - to you, Pops,

except she would stop halfway through,

because you wouldn't have to imagine it

any more.

Shaista, 2025

My grandmother holding Dad's face - she adored and respected him.

Lovebugs

My mother is always beautiful - and most radiant on this day of all days

..

Shaista, 2025

It's Open Link night over at DVerse, and sometimes a prompt is necessary for a tired poet... it seems all I can manage to be jogged into doing a thing, and even then, just about. The prompt was on abundance - meaning food - but love is an abundance of food, of sorts. I wrote this poem for Dad during a poetry workshop knowing he'd been feeling a bit low that day, knowing I would see him immediately afterwards and I could tell him to try not to hate the thought of leaving, of saying goodbye, because everyone who loves him will welcome him to the other side. But of course, that's not fully true is it? Because the ones who are on this side love him even more fiercely than anyone anywhere in any dimension. Most especially the radiant wife he managed to snag for himself a few glorious decades ago. They made beautiful memories on that day, which have lasted a lifetime. It's a tricky business, this loving and being loved... He's ok, for now. It's his mind that makes it a dance with the devil. Long hours in the particular darkness only the blind inhabit. His greatest desperation is finding the next audiobook - any good recommendations to keep his mind occupied?! An abundance of audiobooks - stories galore - that would be the dream abundance for Dad...

YA HADI

You are there, somewhere,

someone to someone else.

We saw fireworks, together on the roof,

and though the moon stayed hidden

for a while, she peeped out later,

to join the carpet of stars;

And I, beneath them, and yet above

my curious skin, wishing for a guide, for us, for him -

Ya Hadi! Oh God, I beseech.

What does your God say? he asks me.

I am not lost to myself, even if

I am lost to you. I was looking for you,

but you were long gone, caught

in another’s light. I, alone in the dark,

wait to be found again. Meanwhile,

I hold my own lantern 

down these treacherous stairs. 

© Shaista Tayabali, 2025 (a translation of Ya Hadi, if needed, is The Guide… one of Allah’s 99 attributes)

With thanks to Sanaa Rizvi for calling me back in to share a poem on Open Link Night at DVerse Poets… it has been a few months since I last posted… and Edna St Vincent Millay’s poem ‘Love is not all (Sonnet XXX)’ was too tempting a prompt. Dangerous to share Millay in full - to expose my poor poet self against her masterful skill - but I can’t not share. What a sonnet. 

‘Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.’

UNORIGINAL

I think it’s okay,

more and more,

this being unoriginal.

I like it. 

A reclaiming of an older animal, 

the lion that didn’t mind 

sharing the shade of the tree,

the wolf whose grey fur melded 

into moon, and shades of sky.

I’m okay wearing the skin 

of what has been before,

and what has yet to come 

in other forms,

more renegade than mine.

Even riot and rebellion is ancient.

Even breaking, even healing.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2025

 For our Thursday night open link session at DVerse … 

Image of Sekhmet via sacredegypt.com

NINETY YEARS OF LOVE

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms, And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail, Unwillingly to school...

I am sitting in the conservatory, Bella beside me on her iPad, the two of us knuckling down to a little late afternoon writing... a remembering of our summer thus far. Bella is mostly mewing beside me while I try to tempt her to various strands of 'where to start a piece' about her recent five days at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. A pigeon is casually clip-clopping on the roof above our heads, a metronomic timer accompanying us as we touch type. Downstairs, three generations of Tayabali men are watching/ listening to the cricket... the tussle between India and England has been on usual historically tense display. Perveen is in her computer corner, working on her third novel, A Sparrow Sings. Her first two novels are still filling her readers from Bombay to Singapore to Canada with nostalgic joy.  

This afternoon, Raf broke a double yolked egg into his noodles. 'Go show Grandma,' I said, knowing double yolks are meaningful to Mum - she broke a double yolk on the morning of her wedding day. And on rare occasions since, always infusing the moment and the day with a touch of ceremonial blessing. Summer in England for the Singapore crew will come to an end in a week's time. The children will go back to school and I will approach another birthday with a mixture of gratitude and bafflement. How do the years coalesce into decades, how are we living the seven ages of man we merely studied, unromantically, at school? Language that was beyond normal comprehension then, and frankly, now.

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;  His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide/ For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes/ And whistles in his sound. 

This summer, my father turned ninety. Ninety years. Is that included in the seven ages? 

Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

No... Shakespeare does not convey a lifetime of love, admiration and the youthful spark that still lights my father's spirit,  humour and wisdom. Perhaps Shakespeare never met such a person as Dr. Chotu Tayabali? What is the worth and weight of a life? Can poetry contain the essence of the human experience? I have been attending poetry workshops since last autumn with the dancer-poet Trivarna Hariharan... each poem I wrote was filled with grief and mourning. So I stopped. In summer and in winter, I am a full time aunt, and find myself unable to concentrate on much other than planning days, moments, activities and meals to make time pass bearably, enjoyably, for children away from their usual landscape of security. 

We painted a fence in candy stripe colours of cream and pink. We drew fish and Pokemon. We watched Fantastic Four at a fancy cinema and in between, wove tales for Chotu of life continued, generations continued. My father always wanted children around him; I have inherited this thread of understanding too. Where there are birds, there is hope and song. So also where there are children, Happy birthday to the original Pied Piper, from the adoring, uncountable, leaves of his tree.

A THOUSAND FLUTES

There are trees everywhere, on my shelves. 

You could call them books, or leaves. 

Ada Limón says, ‘It begins with trees’

and although some might argue that 

‘it begins with water’, with the first separation 

into ‘the waters above and the waters below’

maybe we, in our separation, begin 

our ways of seeing with trees.

For example, we never remember 

that we are mostly water.

We always forget to drink 

in the casual days of abundance -

only when we are parched in the desert,

forced into famine, or praying at Ramadan, 

do we remember the sweet 

source of our beginnings.

We cut the willow down 

because she was rooting 

into the walls of our house, 

seeking the river.

I think of this most days. 

It was an us and her moment 

we never foresaw -

not my tree loving mother, nor me.

My mother adapts. She sees 

the holly that was hidden 

behind the willow

flourishing, freely, now.

I’m still in nostalgic mourning. 

The willow was a thousand flutes

singing all day long, like Radha 

dancing to Krishna.

Pigeons and doves made love in the 

shifting light of a green curtain.

Everything was music and dance

almost all year long.

It’s still now, empty.

My grandmother would have hated it;

Vera loved the willow 

as much, or more.

I liked hiding inside her.

She was not just tree, 

she was water too. 

But being water was her undoing.

She was planted outside a house, 

on a human road, between grass and car. 

Perhaps her death began 

at the moment of her birth? 

Did trees begin with us? 

No, they began with the sea. 

Oh, why do we end tree stories?

Do we?

My shelves are filled with leaves, 

and the willow lives inside me. 

The kissing and the killing

forever entwined within me.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2025

Photos by me, in Emmanuel College, Cambridge - post infusion

Art of Radha Krishna by @abhiart (Abhishek Singh)

Poem included on Dverse Poets Open Link night, a community who have been sharing poetry as long as I have had my blog... 

A LITTLE WISTERIA

In a quiet Cambridge front porch, the scent of a small vine satisfies.

I stepped outside yesterday and buried my nose in the lower hanging wisteria. I let the plump petals bless my forehead, cheeks and just for a moment, thought this, this is what we dream of when times are hard, when beauty is a luxury that almost makes us angry - because others can enjoy what is not ours. When hunger is at the forefront, and food is scarce for us, but others are eating plentifully, voraciously, and also therefore, carelessly, how can we write poetry that is not tinged with steel and scalpel? 

A blackbird is hunting around the daisy adorned grass in front of me. I am standing in the doorway, listening to a chorus of birdsong, knowing that the church bells will ring in less than an hour. It is Friday evening, May has begun and the wider world is roiling away with war, extraction and poverty. 

Tomorrow, when the nurse places a needle in some part of my arm, I will as always think of other humans in less salubrious medical conditions. I will give thanks simultaneously with my silent ‘ouch’ if the needle finds a dry spot, a scarred tissue, a little vein of sorrowful memory. 

“Shaista, there’s a book I think I’d like to re-read,’ says Dad. Saint Francis of Assisi. By Chesterton. Take a look?’ 

‘I’m on it,’ I say. 

And today, it arrives by the magic of mail. 

Scraps of happiness, windows of light, the pattern reveals itself oh so slowly. Mostly we are myopic beings, causing our worst damage when we see but darkly. 

Yitzchak has just been born to Sarah and Abraham in the Old Testament class I attend once a week. ‘He will laugh.’ And soon after, Sarah commands Hagar to flee with Ishmael, to become strangers in a wilderness. I find myself thinking of Zarathustra, the prophet who was born laughing. Lately, I’m trying to understand laughing till we cry and crying turning to laughter. And between them, and around them, the still moving waters of the deep. 

SUMUD صمود

April now… we are in the middle of Passover. Chag Sameach. For some, this is the second Seder without their family members, who were taken hostage during the autumn of 2023. I think about how part of the world is praying everyday for the removal of some people from Gaza for their safety, while others are praying for the continued resistance of Palestinians, to be able to stay in their land, on their land. This particular resistance is known as

صمود

To quote Rabbi Brant Bosen, ‘Those who participate in the Passover Seder are required not only to read the story of the Exodus, but to examine its relevance as the Haggadah instructs us, in every generation.’ Adam from Adama… human from humus… from the soil we arise with soul, and then we are returned to ash and dust, soul returning to… where? I see the atheist’s point of view. If this is all a game, a playful experiment, with God the creator and destroyer, equally, then why engage in a game rigged from the very beginning?

This year finds me drifting in a conscious, thoughtful way, between the Hebrew (new to me) and Arabic letters. Shin, Alif, Lam/Lamed and Meem/Mem…next time, some more letters from Dad’s name… known lovingly as Chotu, he is also of course Mujtaba Tayabali. Tayyib, meaning good… around the Middle East, it’s almost slang for ‘What’s good? All good? All well? Bien? Bené?’ Or more politely, ‘Keef halak, ya tayyib? How are you, O good one?’

Well, it’s not at all tayyib. It’s so far from tayyib. We are all holding on to the scraps of our minds. Scattered Minds is the title of one of Gabor Maté’s earliest books, on ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder - I feel very ADD with the amount of literature I feel I ought to be ‘on top of’, the podcast episodes I have not yet caught up on, even, for the sake of entertainment, the TV dramas and movies I have yet to watch, the music that is passing me by.

Chat GPT helpfully sorts out a version of my life: this is how your life could look, appear the magically typed out words. I pay attention to the orderly structure for a moment, and then I scatter. Meanwhile, in between reading the cricket commentary to Dad, feeding my parents dishes I cook from Hello Fresh recipes, and trying to remember to do at least two surya namaskars a day, I am painting by numbers. Each month, I manage one completed work. Here is April slowly unfolding, one tiny shape at a time…