A neighbor of mine in the village
  Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a ******* the farm, she did
  A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
  To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
  And he said, “Why not?”

In casting about for a corner

Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
  And he said, “Just it.”

And he said, “That ought to make you
  An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
  On your slim-jim arm.”

It was not enough of a garden,
  Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,


She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
  Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
  Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing.
  And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
  Of all things but ****.

A hill each of potatoes,

Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
  And even fruit trees

And yes, she has long mistrusted
  That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
  Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
  When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,


Now when she sees in the village
  How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
  She says, “I know!

It’s as when I was a farmer——”
  Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
  To the same person twice.

Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea numbers each single
Slimesilvered stone.

From whining wind and colder
Grey sea I wrap him warm
And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder
And boyish arm.

Around us fear, descending
Darkness of fear above
And in my heart how deep unending
Ache of love!

Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are somewhere sleeping like a top
Under a marble flag?
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

I thought it out this very day.
Noon upon the clock,
A man may put pretence away
Who leans upon a stick,
May sing, and sing until he drop,
Whether to maid or hag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup,
The moon in a silver bag.

Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your ******* are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.

Do not even bother—
Will not get me to give
Will not get me to soften the edge.
I do not do feeling
I do not call it love;
Do not even bother—
I am cold as frostbite
At the end of May
On sleepless nights
The Sandman’s Prey.

SUICIDE OF AN INTELLIGENT GIRL

Ayad Gharbawi


October 9, 1994 – London

Abrupt instant
Surfaces here
As I write my
Own bloodied script
That speaks
Of my animated
Lives

I see faces whose needs
Are criticizing their
Self-less children..

Just as I reduce
Myself
To a pointless
Second
Of such
Menace

Can you ever imagine me
Just as I
Drive my own
Continuation
To a quiet
Edge?

1658

Endanger it, and the Demand
Of tickets for a sigh
Amazes the Humility
Of Credibility—

Recover it to Nature
And that dejected Fleet
Find Consternation’s Carnival
Divested of its Meat.

The sea of your body is different
since the last time I set sail
and let my one paddle boat
get wrecked in your turbulent currents
and troubled winds.

But it was still you.

Your voice had change
like forgotten leaves in Autumn
and so has your face
interchangeable now in a crowd of many.

And it was still you.

With a different name
more peculiar than the last
and a whole new way of kissing
like only you know how.

But it was still you.

Returning after letting me fall
in the abyss of your absence
and forcing me to get used
to another kind of laughter.

But what if, this time it wasn't you?

And your body would remain the same over the years
and the style of love making
that's your own would stay here.

But it's still you.

And once again
like so many times before you walk away
Leaving a trail of questions
that will never find and answer.

But my path still leads me to you.

When I wake up to the sun of a new day,
inevitably I'll see you unexpectedly,
always on time, with a brand new look
and wearing a different smile.

But it will still be you.

Because I will never be able to scape
this unforgiving fate
and I will always see you leave
walking away from me
while I wonder whether or not
it was still you.

I found you again.