Shams i-tabrizi -The Butterfly-

Alexandra Sirgy
2014 / 12 / 28

In the night
In the pitch blackness
Where are entwined the living and the dead
And the wind’s wailing
I buried my mother
And I set down the last fistful of soil upon the soil
And said: Behold me I return, perhaps to
Find her, beautiful, resting on the bed of her beauty
At home
Where she extended her pale palm toward me
She asked me in admonition why did you leave my boy?
And I understood that I did not go
But she, the beauty, endlessly
Is beset by the unease of absence
and she withdraws far off
and as she draws away as she approaches
Then draws away far off
Then draws away far off
To appear as a dream
Yes I caught sight of my dream......


My neighbor said to me:
Yesterday the beautiful one lent us a visit
And bade us start our games
From the children’s shifts
We arranged the gravel for our game
And she was bending over in her rosy garments
She was messing with the gravel
And arranging the things
From the story’s start to it’s end:
This is how it will be:
This is our house and she dwelled therein
And that is my husband who toils´-or-prays
Or envies the beauty of passing clouds above the refuge
Or watches for a boy passing along the way
And sends poetry
That the echo may reach the princess beyond the refuge
They say her beauty is
Higher than the fences
That Allah, upon perceiving the farness of the snow
Said: It is in her gardens
And saw the verdancy of grasses
Said: It is in her sight
And saw the ripple of basil’s spring
Said: It is in her words
And the river
Was the first of “the pure”
And the last of the scampering feet
Leaving in the outpour of her waters for the sea
The sky rose to the clouds
And when I gazed from above the clouds
I saw there was my mother’s face
They say that God called her by the name of the first mercy
And that safety is like the dove who does not bear semblance with the black
The skies still bear their mercy
Who drags upon the solar axis, her great banner
So peace upon the one who bore Mohammed
(and he is the light of light)
She washed the sacrifice with water
And was reborn onto a brilliant image of something
In the morning, she is the first thing seen
And other dreams at the entanglement of the living with the dead
And before her extinction

----

I glimpsed a vision:
At night
In your great obscurity
And after tossing another fistful
Of soil upon the soil
And nothing that was not her bare beauty returned to the tomb
I saw a butterfly in the futile lighting
And stalked her wings between the tombs
And returned toward the house
To search for the bed
Her queenly bed


Trembling
The tears submerging it
And thus the butterfly
Settled there on the bed
As a white fleck in your great obscurity
I asked myself:
Did you see
And did you hear
And did you come back so that you could see me?
And I asked myself:
Where goes her pale spirit
How?
Who will house her
If the digger did not close off her grave
and the pickax had pealed
In this essential vacuousness of time?

I reached out my hand... The butterfly’s fleck of light did not fear, and I fear, but
What infects my fingers is not a chill, and I fear, but
There is no fever...
And her exacting beauty on threads
Ousted me,
Yes I caught the vision:
At night
In the darkest obscurity
And when the living are tangled with the dead
and the wailing of the sky
I caught sight of my mother.




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