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ryn Sep 2014
Doom train hurtling along
Through the fog in my mind
Towing freight, rectangular and oblong
Dim headlights, you're travelling blind

Five carriages long, excluding engine and caboose
Metal against metal, spitting sparks on steel
Undetermined path, rails will choose
Chugging along on dirt covered wheels

In the cabin, I see the light
Emanating from your furnace
Swallowing up coals in your gaping bite
Tongues of flames licking the surface

Fire breathing, spewing thick black smoke
Almost unseen, against the dark of night
A long plumy arm as if extending to choke
And plug the remaining sources of light

Meandering precariously on tracks that weave
Over uncharted, unfathomable terrain
Your store, so reliably you heave
Worming your way through my brain

What's in that cargo of yours?
What lies within those boxcars?
What drives you to diligently run your course?
What fuels you to travel near and far?

Loads of self pity, self loathing and self reproach
Snaking your way to an unknown destination
Screeching brakes as if a stop you approach
Herald the train of dubious intentions

Light is upon you, dark will dissipate
Your plumes starting to lessen from your stack
The dawn breaking horizon you didn't anticipate
To see another charging towards you on this very same track...
See "Light Train"
See "Collision Course"
On a sunny brae alone I lay
One summer afternoon;
It was the marriage-time of May,
With her young lover, June.

From her mother's heart seemed loath to part
That queen of bridal charms,
But her father smiled on the fairest child
He ever held in his arms.

The trees did wave their plumy crests,
The glad birds carolled clear;
And I, of all the wedding guests,
Was only sullen there!

There was not one, but wished to shun
My aspect void of cheer;
The very gray rocks, looking on,
Asked, "What do you here?"

And I could utter no reply;
In sooth, I did not know
Why I had brought a clouded eye
To greet the general glow.

So, resting on a heathy bank,
I took my heart to me;
And we together sadly sank
Into a reverie.

We thought, "When winter comes again,
Where will these bright things be?
All vanished, like a vision vain,
An unreal mockery!

"The birds that now so blithely sing,
Through deserts, frozen dry,
Poor spectres of the perished spring,
In famished troops will fly.

"And why should we be glad at all?
The leaf is hardly green,
Before a token of its fall
Is on the surface seen!"

Now, whether it were really so,
I never could be sure;
But as in fit of peevish woe,
I stretched me on the moor,

A thousand thousand gleaming fires
Seemed kindling in the air;
A thousand thousand silvery lyres
Resounded far and near:

Methought, the very breath I breathed
Was full of sparks divine,
And all my heather-couch was wreathed
By that celestial shine!

And, while the wide earth echoing rung
To that strange minstrelsy
The little glittering spirits sung,
Or seemed to sing, to me:

"O mortal! mortal! let them die;
Let time and tears destroy,
That we may overflow the sky
With universal joy!

"Let grief distract the sufferer's breast,
And night obscure his way;
They hasten him to endless rest,
And everlasting day.

"To thee the world is like a tomb,
A desert's naked shore;
To us, in unimagined bloom,
It brightens more and more!

"And, could we lift the veil, and give
One brief glimpse to thine eye,
Thou wouldst rejoice for those that live,
BECAUSE they live to die."

The music ceased; the noonday dream,
Like dream of night, withdrew;
But Fancy, still, will sometimes deem
Her fond creation true.



Published in the 1846 collection Poems By Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell under Emily's nom de plume 'Ellis Bell'.
BJ Oct 2017
I love you for no reason
So it's not going to change with change of season.
I love you for no reason
I know it's hard to trust a guy like me
But i want to become a guy you want me to be
Pick out the good from me and leave the rest
Alter me into what suits you best
I will be proud to fulfill your every condition
I love you for no reason
It's you my princess that's all i need
What's in your mind i wish i could read
So that i can do everything before you say
I want to make you smile everyday
You are my desire my zing my ambition
I love you for no reason
You hair are like brown strands of silk
You are fairer than milk
Chubby chicks and baby soft skin
Pointed nose suits best with nose pin
Those plumy lips i can die to kiss
It kills me when you smile with a bliss
Your waist curves are like of a snake
Mole on your face is cherry over cake
Mind and body both you have got
I swear you are god's perfect shot
Beauty with mind is a perfect fusion
I love you for no reason
I will love you forever same as now
With you i am ready to take the vow
I wanted to be with you anyhow
After that my life would be wow
But i know you don't have the same vision
I love you for no reason
You for me is my sweetest dream
Your beauty is something i can not redeem
Best you have a golden heart
Your words hit my head like a dart
I can listen to your chit chat for my whole life
I pray to god to make you my wife
I will pamper you praise you serve you please you
I will hug you poke you curdle you tease you
It's going to b real or it's just an illusion
I love you for no reason
I know we are east and west
I m not good even and you are the best
We can't be together it will not work
How can an angel love a devil rebellious ****
One day may be you will say yes
Might be this poem works full to impress
If it's a no not a big deal
Hug me enough for my wounds to heal
I don't want to force your decision
I love you for no reason
I love you for no reason
Ruhee Aug 2019
Hey cheeky Teddy Bear!
Did they call you fat?
No, You aren't baby,
You have a wonderful warmth,
The earth looks beautiful
Through your warmth that hugs
Souls with Love and feelings..

Little Doughnut you aren't fat,
You are curvy
& Chummy Chum.

Sweet little potato
Smile a loads
Yes! You are
A Chum chum Plumy Doll.

Fathima Ruhee
Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall—
Foot suspended in its fall—
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.

Never another pet for me!
Let your place all vacant be;
Better blankness day by day
Than companion torn away.
Better bid his memory fade,
Better blot each mark he made,
Selfishly escape distress
By contrived forgetfulness,
Than preserve his prints to make
Every morn and eve an ache.

From the chair whereon he sat
Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;
Rake his little pathways out
Mid the bushes roundabout;
Smooth away his talons’ mark
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,
Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,
Waiting us who loitered round.

Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
His existence ruled by ours,
Should - by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,
By the merely taking hence
Of his insignificance—
Loom as largened to the sense,
Shape as part, above man’s will,
Of the Imperturbable.

As a prisoner, flight debarred,
Exercising in a yard,
Still retain I, troubled, shaken,
Mean estate, by him forsaken;
And this home, which scarcely took
Impress from his little look,
By his faring to the Dim
Grows all eloquent of him.

Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.
Now, man of croziers, shadows called our names
And then away, away, like whirling flames;
And now fled by, mist-covered, without sound,
The youth and lady and the deer and hound;
'Gaze no more on the phantoms,' Niamh said,
And kissed my eyes, and, swaying her bright head
And her bright body, sang of faery and man
Before God was or my old line began;
Wars shadowy, vast, exultant; faeries of old
Who wedded men with rings of Druid gold;
And how those lovers never turn their eyes
Upon the life that fades and flickers and dies,
Yet love and kiss on dim shores far away
Rolled round with music of the sighing spray:
Yet sang no more as when, like a brown bee
That has drunk full, she crossed the misty sea
With me in her white arms a hundred years
Before this day; for now the fall of tears
Troubled her song.

                   I do not know if days
Or hours passed by, yet hold the morning rays
Shone many times among the glimmering flowers
Woven into her hair, before dark towers
Rose in the darkness, and the white surf gleamed
About them; and the horse of Faery screamed
And shivered, knowing the Isle of Many Fears,
Nor ceased until white Niamh stroked his ears
And named him by sweet names.

                              A foaming tide
Whitened afar with surge, fan-formed and wide,
Burst from a great door matred by many a blow
From mace and sword and pole-axe, long ago
When gods and giants warred.  We rode between
The seaweed-covered pillars; and the green
And surging phosphorus alone gave light
On our dark pathway, till a countless flight
Of moonlit steps glimmered; and left and right
Dark statues glimmered over the pale tide
Upon dark thrones.  Between the lids of one
The imaged meteors had flashed and run
And had disported in the stilly jet,
And the fixed stars had dawned and shone and set,
Since God made Time and Death and Sleep:  the other
Stretched his long arm to where, a misty smother,
The stream churned, churned, and churned - his lips apart,
As though he told his never-slumbering heart
Of every foamdrop on its misty way.
Tying the horse to his vast foot that lay
Half in the unvesselled sea, we climbed the stair
And climbed so long, I thought the last steps were
Hung from the morning star; when these mild words
Fanned the delighted air like wings of birds:
'My brothers spring out of their beds at morn,
A-murmur like young partridge:  with loud horn
They chase the noontide deer;
And when the dew-drowned stars hang in the air
Look to long fishing-lines, or point and pare
An ashen hunting spear.
O sigh, O fluttering sigh, be kind to me;
Flutter along the froth lips of the sea,
And shores the froth lips wet:
And stay a little while, and bid them weep:
Ah, touch their blue-veined eyelids if they sleep,
And shake their coverlet.
When you have told how I weep endlessly,
Flutter along the froth lips of the sea
And home to me again,
And in the shadow of my hair lie hid,
And tell me that you found a man unbid,
The saddest of all men.'

A lady with soft eyes like funeral tapers,
And face that seemed wrought out of moonlit vapours,
And a sad mouth, that fear made tremulous
As any ruddy moth, looked down on us;
And she with a wave-rusted chain was tied
To two old eagles, full of ancient pride,
That with dim eyeballs stood on either side.
Few feathers were on their dishevelled wings,
For their dim minds were with the ancient things.

'I bring deliverance,' pearl-pale Niamh said.

'Neither the living, nor the unlabouring dead,
Nor the high gods who never lived, may fight
My enemy and hope; demons for fright
Jabber and scream about him in the night;
For he is strong and crafty as the seas
That sprang under the Seven Hazel Trees,
And I must needs endure and hate and weep,
Until the gods and demons drop asleep,
Hearing Acdh touch thc mournful strings of gold.'

'Is he so dreadful?'
                     'Be not over-bold,
But fly while still you may.'
                              And thereon I:
'This demon shall be battered till he die,
And his loose bulk be thrown in the loud tide.'
'Flee from him,' pearl-pale Niamh weeping cried,
'For all men flee the demons'; but moved not
My angry king-remembering soul one jot.
There was no mightier soul of Heber's line;
Now it is old and mouse-like.  For a sign
I burst the chain:  still earless, neNeless, blind,
Wrapped in the things of the unhuman mind,
In some dim memory or ancient mood,
Still earless, netveless, blind, the eagles stood.

And then we climbed the stair to a high door;
A hundred horsemen on the basalt floor
Beneath had paced content:  we held our way
And stood within:  clothed in a misty ray
I saw a foam-white seagull drift and float
Under the roof, and with a straining throat
Shouted, and hailed him:  he hung there a star,
For no man's cry shall ever mount so far;
Not even your God could have thrown down that hall;
Stabling His unloosed lightnings in their stall,
He had sat down and sighed with cumbered heart,
As though His hour were come.

                              We sought the part
That was most distant from the door; green slime
Made the way slippery, and time on time
Showed prints of sea-born scales, while down through it
The captive's journeys to and fro were writ
Like a small river, and where feet touched came
A momentary gleam of phosphorus flame.
Under the deepest shadows of the hall
That woman found a ring hung on the wall,
And in the ring a torch, and with its flare
Making a world about her in the air,
Passed under the dim doorway, out of sight,
And came again, holding a second light
Burning between her fingers, and in mine
Laid it and sighed:  I held a sword whose shine
No centuries could dim, and a word ran
Thereon in Ogham letters, 'Manannan';
That sea-god's name, who in a deep content
Sprang dripping, and, with captive demons sent
Out of the sevenfold seas, built the dark hall
Rooted in foam and clouds, and cried to all
The mightier masters of a mightier race;
And at his cry there came no milk-pale face
Under a crown of thorns and dark with blood,
But only exultant faces.

                         Niamh stood
With bowed head, trembling when the white blade shone,
But she whose hours of tenderness were gone
Had neither hope nor fear.  I bade them hide
Under the shadowS till the tumults died
Of the loud-crashing and earth-shaking fight,
Lest they should look upon some dreadful sight;
And ****** the torch between the slimy flags.
A dome made out of endless carven jags,
Where shadowy face flowed into shadowy face,
Looked down on me; and in the self-same place
I waited hour by hour, and the high dome,
Windowless, pillarless, multitudinous home
Of faces, waited; and the leisured gaze
Was loaded with the memory of days
Buried and mighty.  When through the great door
The dawn came in, and glimmered on the floor
With a pale light, I journeyed round the hall
And found a door deep sunken in the wall,
The least of doors; beyond on a dim plain
A little mnnel made a bubbling strain,
And on the runnel's stony and bare edge
A dusky demon dry as a withered sedge
Swayed, crooning to himself an unknown tongue:
In a sad revelry he sang and swung
Bacchant and mournful, passing to and fro
His hand along the runnel's side, as though
The flowers still grew there:  far on the sea's waste
Shaking and waving, vapour vapour chased,
While high frail cloudlets, fed with a green light,
Like drifts of leaves, immovable and bright,
Hung in the passionate dawn.  He slowly turned:
A demon's leisure:  eyes, first white, now burned
Like wings of kingfishers; and he arose
Barking.  We trampled up and down with blows
Of sword and brazen battle-axe, while day
Gave to high noon and noon to night gave way;
And when he knew the sword of Manannan
Amid the shades of night, he changed and ran
Through many shapes; I lunged at the smooth throat
Of a great eel; it changed, and I but smote
A fir-tree roaring in its leafless top;
And thereupon I drew the livid chop
Of a drowned dripping body to my breast;
Horror from horror grew; but when the west
Had surged up in a plumy fire, I drave
Through heart and spine; and cast him in the wave
Lest Niamh shudder.

                    Full of hope and dread
Those two came carrying wine and meat and bread,
And healed my wounds with unguents out of flowers
That feed white moths by some De Danaan shrine;
Then in that hall, lit by the dim sea-shine,
We lay on skins of otters, and drank wine,
Brewed by the sea-gods, from huge cups that lay
Upon the lips of sea-gods in their day;
And then on heaped-up skins of otters slept.
And when the sun once more in saffron stept,
Rolling his flagrant wheel out of the deep,
We sang the loves and angers without sleep,
And all the exultant labours of the strong.
But now the lying clerics ****** song
With barren words and flatteries of the weak.
In what land do the powerless turn the beak
Of ravening Sorrow, or the hand of Wrath?
For all your croziers, they have left the path
And wander in the storms and clinging snows,
Hopeless for ever:  ancient Oisin knows,
For he is weak and poor and blind, and lies
On the anvil of the world.

S.  Patrick.        Be still:  the skies
Are choked with thunder, lightning, and fierce wind,
For God has heard, and speaks His angry mind;
Go cast your body on the stones and pray,
For He has wrought midnight and dawn and day.

Oisin. Saint, do you weep? I hear amid the thunder
The ****** horses; atmour torn asunder;
Laughter and cries.  The armies clash and shock,
And now the daylight-darkening ravens flock.
Cease, cease, O mournful, laughing ****** horn!

We feasted for three days.  On the fourth morn
I found, dropping sea-foam on the wide stair,
And hung with slime, and whispering in his hair,
That demon dull and unsubduable;
And once more to a day-long battle fell,
And at the sundown threw him in the surge,
To lie until the fourth morn saw emerge
His new-healed shape; and for a hundred years
So watred, so feasted, with nor dreams nor fears,
Nor languor nor fatigue:  an endless feast,
An endless war.

                The hundred years had ceased;
I stood upon the stair:  the surges bore
A beech-bough to me, and my heart grew sore,
Remembering how I had stood by white-haired Finn
Under a beech at Almhuin and heard the thin
Outcry of bats.

                And then young Niamh came
Holding that horse, and sadly called my name;
I mounted, and we passed over the lone
And drifting greyness, while this monotone,
Surly and distant, mixed inseparably
Into the clangour of the wind and sea.

'I hear my soul drop down into decay,
And Mananna's dark tower, stone after stone.
Gather sea-slime and fall the seaward way,
And the moon goad the waters night and day,
That all be overthrown.

'But till the moon has taken all, I wage
War on the mightiest men under the skies,
And they have fallen or fled, age after age.
Light is man's love, and lighter is man's rage;
His purpose drifts and dies.'

And then lost Niamh murmured, 'Love, we go
To the Island of Forgetfulness, for lo!
The Islands of Dancing and of Victories
Are empty of all power.'

                         'And which of these
Is the Island of Content?'

                           'None know,' she said;
And on my ***** laid her weeping head.
Hilda Nov 2012
Of skylarks and June roses bygone poets sing.
Yet alas! Seldom pen sweet lines to such as thee.
O! How I yearn from harshest winds to set you free
If such futile vain longings could perchance take wing.

Poor darling stray! Green eyes stare pleading into mine.
O! My heart aches to stroke ebony silken fur
And cuddling you revel in thy low grateful purr.
Yet how can I to fate this fondest wish resign?

Raven Miriam! Daughter o' plumy waving tail
Dancing freely, arms outstretched in moss laden air,
For three baby sisters and wee brother doth care;
Showering them all in tender love without fail.

Four growing babes frolicking with Miriam so dear.
One glossiest raven, proud miniature of thee;
Grey tabbies—two mittened—comprise those other three.
Bringing to lonely bleak days a ray of cheer.

One balmy afternoon I searched but found I none.
To my frail despairing call, silence echoing
While all around me harsh November winds blowing
Taunting in cruelest mockery—all now are gone!

One morn you came—yes! Only you in dreary rain.
With glad heart and bountiful meal I begged thee cleave.
Poor onyx stray! Where is thy fam'ly? Why must thou leave?
Helpless, I watch you cross the busy road—again.

**~Hilda~
© Hilda November 30, 2012.
Marian Apr 2014
Satin fluffy fur and plumy tail
I* love you with all my heart
Like ever since the day I kept you
Violas lead an orchestra just for you
Every time I see you, you make me laugh
So you are a delightful and adorable little boy
Trust and respect is reflected in your eyes even though you're shy
Really you make me cry sometimes remembering that
Onyx was your mother and now she's gone... at least I still have you

**~Marian~
Written for my handsome male cat, Silvestro!!! :) ~~~~<3
He is a darling little boy cat!! :) ~~~~<3
Enjoy this poem, my HP friends!!! :) ~~~~~<3
Prevarication permits pretend perception, presenting
piquantly piqued, pimply pimping *******, plucky
pulchritudinous previously pusillanimous, prevalently
puckish, psychic packman, pokemon playing proletarian

puppeteer pygmy, peevishly *****, plummy, plumy,
pompously pushy, pampered, prefabricated pinchbeck,
pokily plying plowshear, plodding peregrination, pied
piper pitifully peppy pornographic potato pealing,

parsimonious paradoxical protagonist, proposing
preposterous panicky pacification plots, prioritization
pertinent penultimate peroration, perhaps perceiving
perjuring, perplexing, perverting puzzling pronouncements

projecting pulsating pixelated pulpy pinball pinging
packets prompting pacific, poetic, phlegmatic purplish
psoriasis plagued, plumbum pallor pallid, Paleolithic
protuberance pronounced, psychosomatic prohibitionist,

polarizing perfunctory peculiarly progressive, patriotic
postmodern pathologically proud paternal panache,
peripatetic panaceas portraying prescient perfidious
puerile president, predominantly proposing parochial

principles, plenty public parking, purposefully
promoting pharisee phalanxes, pilates practicing
paragons, perennially peaceably proficient protesters,
profitable polygamy, pugnacious pitbull powerball

players, pandering polyandry, propagating professional
palindrome pensive peeping people, peddling,
proselytizing predicating prostitution, proliferating
phenomenally, populist persona promulgated peyote

phased physicians pioneering prescription promoting
paradisiacal pricey photographic pictures, placating
phrenetic physical perturbation partaking place
purchased (paid paltry pennies) por palatial piazza.
alaric7 Jan 2018
Yellow wears slippery shoes, an unhappy god.  

Will Watson be eaten by the painted

shark?  Expose juniper’s indifferent root.

Loft enigma.  Foofaraw say of Plautus’

devising, glad plumy benefice scattered

without combustion glowers, marigold all along.

February ignition, mucilaginous haecceity’s feldspar,

Longinus’ styptic calendula ha ha

ha frequently obtrudes following moody feints.

Though mountain disagree, hushed

siempre blunts impediment.  Obvious martyred

snowdrift kitsch stipples precious

lumpen.  Grinning centurion reached

what rebus released, old ******’s witty toenails.

We have arrived slain twee nightingale.
We met on a journey, yet rosy and plumy.
     “Yet, met only—"
Hand within hand, yet time only for lend.
     “Yet, met only—"
Heart within heart, a start yet to part.
     “Yet, met only—"
Now, query after query, as to why all had to be;
yet only a theory, teary and lonely…
     “We met only—"

Was it the gold in her hair
whose sheen I’d sought,
     or an ode to inlay in gold;
     watch it unfold till Time turned cold?

Was it the honey in her eyes,
dripping dreams on Time’s tides,
     or the vile Time bending the knee—
     trapped in wax for eternity?

Was it love in her summer rain thrum
whose single strum had my hive hum
buzzing and breathing on her balm—
her honey coated charm that stung silver Diana glum;
     or was it only the benign buzz of a busy bee
     brewing tomorrow for her and me?  

Was it the Cyprus sun in her Venus-smile
whose arch in late March moves meadows to march
in many a motley match under her golden thatch?
     Or maybe— I failed to see,
     beneath the fizzy florets of her babbling sea,
     simpered the whimsy tides of green envy,
     leering and gloating over her and me
     from the shingled shrine of their majesty,
     the haughty, naughty, iffy and fluky Aphrodite.

Perhaps, she was Beauty and I was Love;
yet with a poignant poem pounding above—
bathing while us in each other’s eyes,
shifted the shingles with a titan’s lies.

We'd yet met only on a lonely journey
where there only had been only her and me.
We'd fallen fondly in love only!
We'd yet met only! We'd yet met only!

We were at the prow,
yet we didn’t know how—
The tides had breached the brow,
yet, we didn’t know how—

The sea was old; its breath blew cold.
The tides leaped bold; on us they rolled.
Yet—
We had our tow; we needed to plough;
We didn't want to bow; but we didn't know how!

We were yet in love;
and this too, we didn't know how!

We were shipwrecked; we were flecked.
The wheel was cracked, and we were whacked.
Beached on different shores of foolish fortune’s floors,
we fought different wars at dour deities' doors.

Sealed though in opposite hourglass ends,
how we despaired for its shared sands!
Yet, how they slip through mere human hands!
How they slip through until no one ever stands!

I was Love
and Aphrodite let me be.
But she was Beauty,
over whom the dazzling deity
spumed with envy—
     this is how she, the sour deity,
     effervescing with grim envy,
     flexed her hands in a hungry ivy,
     ever gripping, green with growing envy,

     thus breaking in her glass and separating us!

No vine will creep over her morning memory.
And this, not only—
The moist moss of loss muffled the old buzzing bee.
“Yet this, not only—"
Her strands ripple only in the wake of memory.
And this, not only—
Her balmy breeze breathes now yonder a secret sea.
“Yet this, not only—"

Whenever I shut my eyes,
they run for a million miles.
There, I see through tides
her summer-leaking eyes,
promising me,

"Şahnaz"

in her paradise.


© Hirondelle, July 3, 2025
    Arif Hifzioglu
This is based on a real story, unfortunately and most bitterly. I stumbled upon her obituary most unexpectedly back in 2003. How time froze around me in an instant at that heavy moment! How all feelings emptied in a flush from the planet! How I wept! How I wept!

How radiantly I can still feel the hot kiss of the racing streams down my cheeks! When the pool of soul and tears were emptied, and the numb grief of my shock was lifted, how hard the bitter grief struck!

She was Şahnaz (pronounced as ‘Shuhnuz’). And we had met on board of the plane, flying from Cyprus to Ankara in March, 1990— we were 21-year-old university students back then.

As good fortune would have it, there was this delay due to poor weather conditions, and I found myself she talking to me. It was a dream unfolding in rosy, fluffy plumes because she was the girl who had passed by me before the check-in an hour ago and ever since I had nurtured a hopeless crush on her. Yes, the fortune had it and she sat beside me, she talked to me, and there was this heaven-sent delay for about an hour on board of the plane!

We had melted all the ice and were pretty comfortable in a friendly chitchat of our education and other major aspects of our lives. It turned out she was a medicine student in Moscow, so she would have a transfer flight from Ankara. I was, however, studying English in Ankara, which meant an immediate split after the descent. Yet brief though the flight was how much space it was able to give us to establish our kingdom of heaven. I felt the whole universe by my side when she wrote her address on a piece of paper in Russian letters and gave it to me. When next she said she didn’t have any aviophobia but she was, nevertheless, terrified with take-offs and asked if she could, perhaps, grip my hand whilst the take-off, I felt like all the universe stop its business and bow before me.

All these were much more than a lucky coincidence, which may make you feel that I am stretching my luck as a writer, but I have told you; this is a memoir. Yes, there was this heavenly miracle unfurling right by my side to take me to its corona and wrap both of us forever. She was either a heaven-sent angel, or I, for one reason which I will never know, was chosen by all the heavens.

Or, it felt like that until I went to the flat where I stayed with four other Cypriot students. Dear friends they were, and still are. It was not long after I divulged the story of the miracle that there was a loud knock on the door at around two o’clock in the morning.

No, it was not her. Even heavenly miracles have their limits and mine had even transcended by any chance any conceivable limit, if any!

The coin had flipped over, and it was time for tragedy to unfold. There were four or five ruffian looking men with automatic guns in their hands. Within a lot of fear and stress, it turned out they were undercover agents from the Bureau of Foreign Terrorism and we were to be taken for surveillance and interrogation with a warrant they deemed unnecessary to show. Were they really from the state? Where were we going?

And no, we were not terrorists, nor political activists. We were a socially active bunch romantics who prepared concerts and drama shows for the summer youth festivals in our own country, Cyprus. We were also writers: we had our culturally oriented journal which we issued 4 times a year. Anyway, we desperately watched some of our personals being confiscated among which was the address which never came to me again. Which no miracle would deliver. Even miracles do have their blind alleys.

The surveillance took three days where we were kept in separate, one-meter square dark cells. Our visitors, some rats on the ***** stinking mat. Then we came out, without our confiscated personals. That’s why some part of me is still in one of those dark cells.

What I love about the belief system of pagan or naturalistic cultures is that they see gods or superhuman forces to be capricious. Most of us, the modern men, are pushed to the edge of an abyss of modernity, feeling desperate within the clutches some meaning-devoid existential crisis. It’s not only to watch all our sand castles being leveled to the ground! Accordingly, there is ample reference to ‘whimsy tides’ in this elegy.

I haven’t seen Şahnaz ever since despite the lengths I went to find her. And you already know what happened 13 years later.

I have found her tomb, though. It is in Lapithos, 16 kilometers to the west of the major tourism hub Kyrenia. Her tomb is very easy to spot in the idyllic cemetery which overlooks the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea. Her parents must have found solace for their insuperable grief in attributing to her a shrine. This beautiful structure has four marble columns and a ceiling. Next to Şahnaz's resting spot, it also features a marble bench and a faucet. The marble is honey with natural veining. You walk up a short flight of stairs to the entrance of her shrine which is flanked by her initials carved in marble with exquisite calligraphy.

I honored her by riding my father’s ill maintained bicycle with my guitar on my back to her shrine which was on the other side of the mountain. It was a grinding experience but spiritually relieving all the same. With shaking hands, I timorously yet reverently lifted the chain on the entrance and placed my hand on her tomb for a long time feeling the same hot tears pour on the stone. We held hand in hand like we did on the plane ‘many a many year ago’. Then, I sat on the cold bench and played her song to her, getting choked halfway, hot tears everywhere.

How desperately I had believed that if I compose a very beautiful song and played it with my friends in the ruins of Salamis for a large audience, she would rive the standing ovation and run up to me. Even heavenly miracles hit a cul-de-sac...

“I was a child, and she was a child in a kingdom by the sea.” (With due respect to Edgar Allan Poe for his Annabel Lee)

Some of you may wonder what happened to Şahnaz in 2003. It was a car accident. I have been told that on her way back from the hospital where she had checked the condition of a patient she had recently operated, her car skidded into a ditch because of the sudden rain which fell on the hot asphalt and caused oil sheening.
This poem is my first written tribute to her. The next one will be the full cover narrative of what little account I have provided you with above.

But, whatever I do, I feel a part of me will still be on that plane and another one is still in that dark cell, shivering in my father’s souvenir corduroy jacket in the biting cold of early March; tired, leaning against the cold wall.

— The End —