clouds purl away over the hills,
pretending to be a river.
for months it has been like this--
lanky adolescent sumacs
lifting their arms to a puritan sky
that keeps withholding rain.
at the end of each day, crows piece together
the black map of night on which
the road of no return is shorter than
the right road, but still longer than life.

somewhere you have lost your truths,
even as you fought lies. what does
your heart gather for you now? do you
ever wonder why love drives free souls
and then abandons them? not lack of words,
but lack of love gives birth to
clouds, ones obstructing light
but without life-giving rains.

dusk crawls up the hillside.
i imagine that i see your shadow
like the dark earth torn from the river bend,
or a jagged rock wrenched from the mountain.
just as night rubs its feet, a deer mouse runs
across the parched grass. the sky drains
to a distant eddy. goodnight, i say
to no one there.

the moon streams in ribbons
of white.  down here, on this map of night,
there is no sign of the brief moment
when the heart is darkened
by the pause of seasons.

i pray for the gift of light under the black umbrella,
and for the hidden angels to guide you

you can tell i didn't write this play.
the backdrop is all wrong
and the most important props
are missing--props as in:
that which held me up.

props on which i leaned.
nights are split down the center
and dawn is slow to appear
having forgotten the script
words line up like reluctant ghosts

you see how bad it is?
the scenery doesn't fit the scene
(if that makes any sense)
outside the sky explodes with color
the sky exhales

its breath all gold and glowing
there were mornings...there have been
mornings in life that cut
like a guillotine
searching for the soft throat of dreams

there have been days that were
little more than apologies and promises
and stolen moments
and every dream smelled like hurt blossoms

when morning broke into shards of sunlight

a poem is not enough unless
the sun rises or sets within it
or the moon travels from one side
of its horizon
to the other
the page must be torn by light
or flattened in darkness
a poem should hang like a transparent
Dacca gauze that is known as woven air,
running water, evening dew.

a poem is only about poetry
when the poet is not in love.

distant mountains have turned to glass

there is a city where no news can come

a shadow runs away to find its body

until it shrivels, shrinks into almost
nothing,

so it can slip, unseen, into the bed
of an almost forgotten never-to-be lover

who rolls over in his sleep, murmuring,
" i remember nothing."

the poem-shadow slips out
and looks up at the firmament
sheened in moonlight.

autumn chill. the wind blows
rain that turns to ice.
the poem has been cold a long, long time.

i won't tell your father how you betrayed me
nor that a shadow has fallen
like an unburied casualty
on southern snow.

i won't tell him that the poem has died

~Jade

*The Dacca Gauzes

Agha Shahid Ali

even though you have never arrived, your scent
lingers in the air above this lake of fractured glass.
have you ever noticed how the light has become
more distant than it was in childhood, how
a fine, silvery mist descends on memory,
dampening the  hair on the nape of your neck?
how can the cause of absence not be relevant
to the story that is composed of my life?
how can we pretend that we had not moored
our hearts to such a fragile substance as love?
how did i give up myself for an imagined affair?

but there are days when kindness forgives
and the art of doing nothing is a kind of immortality.
there are some nights when dreams turn the moon to butter
and i can still hear your voice, still feel
my own body piece by piece dissolving,
leaving only the heart exposed and beating.
there are still times when i feel your phantom touch
and the hair on your arm brushing against my arm,
your lips on my lips making me weak with desire
how i wish you would come back

and whisper me some more lies,
oh god, such real and beautiful lies

in my dream, your voice
becomes more and more distant, as if
you are trying to reach me somewhere else;
almost in the foreign language of the dead.
sometimes a wind comes down from the
bluest ridges and takes everything away with it.

i wish that summer were just now beginning,
not struggling so hard to end. the nights
drop over me like long black hair.
my heart is a balloon rising ponderously into the unknown.
i wish this poem could make sense, but only
love has ever made any sense to me, and

love is like a painting that deteriorates
before it is finished, it takes so long
to create.  you were like all my past sins--
imperfect, deeply wretched, the one salvation
i longed for; faith in a ruined church--
your windblown, impoverished love.

so far this poem makes no sense; has
no sensitivity.  the last of the season
is falling to pieces, drifting down as
all the trees let go. i run to the balcony but it
is an unfinished painting, empty,
cracked, and crumbling;

making half-finished shadows inside me

love was once thought to be
a source

of greatness. perhaps for example,
it moves you like

a religious rapture
of spirit and matter fused.
true and beautiful

like an abstract landscape
you long to hold it..

often there is a crescent moon
silvering the wilderness dark

not enough light to see by, but enough
for a beauty that is ancient and new,

straddling humanity's years.

if we could only behold it, it might last--
but the world is degenerating
macularly, kindness is dimming,

and we are lifting the hem of some final,
critical, intolerant morning.
you do remember when i said
that in the book of lost entries
nothing is sacred but the crossed out things
forgotten on the haunted page
in the unforgiving dark of ink

it was an odd weekend.  i painted a shoe,
watched incense burn
and watched coffee
grow cold. i thought i heard
huge wings settle over the
fireplace chimney.  and sure enough,
there was a huge buzzard sitting there,
also watching,

watching my life grow cold.
there were noises in the shadows
like breathing, a single feather floated
down inside the chimney
in slow motion, like a fragment
of a black silk veil
full of grace.

i knew there was something secret
under those wings.
i watched how she unfolded them.
i watched
and listened
to what sounded like the wind
rustling in the leaves

there are miracles that happen.
from wet eye lashes,
from mute tongues,
words are waiting
to fall like winter snow.

silence isn't always golden.
but words can melt silence
like candle wax.
words are like lemon leaves
shining on the sour edges of my life.

words have honed my dreams on the knife-blade of sorrow.

there are miracles that happen
there are words like wet furrows
plowing silence away

making my soul
more and more transparent
like a glass bell.
one day i might learn to recognize
true words from lies

there are miracles that happen

the trees and the grass are aging.
even the mist looks wrinkled
and old
clouds are going gray
the sun is tired
of rising,
can't get up until late afternoon

birds quaver their songs off-key
and elderly insects
complain with raspy voices
as they surrender to relentless time

only the rolling water of the river flows on
day after day, and even that
is by no means guaranteed

among the dying grasses,
broken branches
where the wind hides, sighing and weeping

i, too, feel as melancholy
as a falling leaf

the late afternoon sun is a cartload of light,
its wheels rolling toward the horizon.
every day it pushes a cargo of years
over the western mountains,

it's a cart that can never turn back.
at night all along the riverbank
the water reflects the moonlight's pale skin
the long grasses stoop to drink

and a breeze from an old sepia photograph
hangs behind the clouds, in a sky
i have never seen from a room
where i have never been

the wounds of time heal slowly
if they heal at all ... some say
pain proves that we age in time
as the kite string in our hands
proves that kites are snatched away by the sky

if my eyes could stop gazing
mournfully from the mirror
louder than a rifle shot
softer than the twilight sun

if you could cross the ditch within yourself
if you could reach the other side
pushing a cartload of light
your tears of regret falling like hail
then and only then could you finally claim your soul