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.’