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.’