Pir Muhammad Karwan was originally a seasonal nomad from the mountains bordering Pakistan, in the thickest forests remaining in Afghanistan. During the war, he was a teenager and they smuggled weapons and other illicit things back and forth. At one point in the early 1990s, there was a poetry competition held in Peshawar, Pakistan, by Spedai magazine. Karwan's submission, a long poem called “The Poplars are Speaking” stood out far beyond the others. No one had seen this sort of folk surrealism before.

The following consists of the introduction and two primary poems in Karwan’s 2002 collection, The Fairy’s Palm.

Introduction

I don’t know how much of a poet I may or may not be. But now, as I recollect in particular the moments of my childhood, it strikes me that I was much more of a poet in my childhood. Even now, in painting truly good pictures of contemporary moments—tragedies, happinesses, and beauty—I rely on those fleeting, intensely colorful moments of childhood, and it is them which I use to construct the melodic walls of my poems’ houses. In my childhood, the Fairy-spirit of letters and lexicon was not under my command, though I certainly did have a command over the poetic sensibility of a child. I felt the stories of fairies to be so real that I would see them in my dreams. In my child’s mind and imagination I would create this fairy, and would follow after her so intently that I would wear out even sandals of iron. Then deep in the wilderness, a meditating ascetic would give me the Secret Name (ism-e a‛zam), would give me an incantation (du‛â), and I would get cloaked in fairy wings.

In childhood there is a pure love of nature and imagination free of artifice and analysis, and this very same love shapes a man’s future.

The familial environment also has an influence on a child’s future. Even though neither my father nor my mother were poets, my mother and father instilled in me a great deal of poetic sensibilities.

My mother spent her childhood and youth in a great deal of sorrow and tragedy. This tragedy is my inheritance from my mother, and to this day I have a great love for tragic arts. I enjoy tragic music; I enjoy tragic films, stories, novels, and poems. My mother’s four brothers died, one after the other. Once I had gotten a bit fat and healthy, alongside other stories my mother would tell me the stories of how her brothers died. After the stories, she would cry; I would kiss my mother and plead with her, saying, “That’s enough, Mama, don’t cry!” Every now and then, my mother would say a landay in her brothers’ memory, in a tiny voice. My mother’s voice sounded so sweet it would bring me to tears. I mentioned earlier that in my childhood I did not yet have a way with letters and words; if I had, there were many feelings I would have rendered poetic through the force of letters and words. I write for you one recollection which is very much like a poem:

My mother had built me a swing in the room on our second story; and I used to swing in it. From the window of that second story room, I would look directly out at the mountains. And

straight ahead, the mountains would also swing. I couldn’t understand it: “How are these mountains swinging?” When I would get off the swing, the mountains would also stand still in their place. One day, a very fine rain had fallen. I was swinging on my swing, when all of a sudden I noticed the mountains. There was a rainbow (Pashto: da buday tâl) = “The old lady’s swing”) unfurled in their skirt-hem, refracting their green and golden hues. The mountains were swinging; I said to myself, “Oh, so that must be the mountains’ swing, and that’s how they must be swinging!” and I thenceforth called that green and gold scattered across the mountains “the mountains’ swing” (da ghruno tâl).

In this very way I would fall into poetic states. My father was a very deeply devout and spiritual man, and many times he would get up in the middle of the night to offer tahajjud prayers. Every now and then, he would wake me up too. I loved the quiet in the dead of night, and the glowing of the stars. And every now and then, he would show me these two stars, sort of close together in the sky. One of them was a brilliant, pure white. And my father would tell me, “That’s Layla…” The other one was a little smaller than the fat, brilliant white one, and was a little reddish. My father would say, “…and that’s Majnun. They both love each other very much, and through God’s power, they climbed up into the sky. Once a year, they take each other in their embrace, and if someone sees them like that in each others’ arms, God would grant that person whatever they might ask for.” In my heart, I used to wish that I could see them in each others’ embrace; then I would say to myself, “Well, fine; if I were to see them in each others’ arms, then what would I ask for?” I didn’t like the idea of asking. These are the sorts of thoughts I’d be occupied with as I was carried off to sleep.

My father used to have such an enormous love for honeybees. When winter had passed, our nomad camp would move back to our hamlet in the mountains. Our mountains are hidden under dense oak forests; there were some coniferous forests as well. My father used to watch the bees at the edge of a spring in the skirt-hem of the forests. The bees would come to the spring, take a mouthful of water, and then return back into the forest. My father would watch where they went, and then follow after them into the woods.

Occasionally, we’d find the bees’ nest in some grand old oak tree. Flashing in the midst of the sun’s rays like airborne sparks, the bees would enter a hole in the oak, and some would come out as well. This picture is still alive in my mind even today, and even today I still can’t encompass this beauty within words. My father would bore a small hole in the oak, to get at the honeybees. There’d be honeycomb after honeycomb in there. He’d plunge his fingers into the swarm of bees; one or two would sting his fingers and hands; but my father never lost his concentration. When he’d get stung on his face or near his eyes, he’d ask me to pull out the stinger, and I’d pull it out. When the honeybees stung me, I’d cry, but my father would say that the sting was a cure for any and all ailment.

Amidst the swarm, my father would find a long, golden honeybee. He’d hand it to me, saying “Take it very, very gently and carefully. This is the queen, and she can’t sting. I’d gently hold the queen in my fingers. How soft she was! My heart would get a sweetish sort of feeling for her. My father would take a small pair of scissors from out of his waistcoat pocket, and clip the queen’s wings. Then he put her in an empty honey jar, leaving the lid open. The bees would swarm all around the lip of the jar, and enter in droves. Then he’d close the lid, and he’d cut the honeycombs out of the nest. He’d give me one small slab of honeycomb; I’d eat two little pieces and be satisfied. Then within seconds, the honey would make me thirsty, and I’d lay down beside an ice-cold spring, and drink, while my father filled up a jar of honey, and then we’d set

off for home.

We would be so happy, walking down the path. My face would be all swollen with bee stings, and my fingers would be all blistered. My father would hold up a mirror, and I’d have a good laugh at myself. Now, I used to ask my father questions about anything and everything. And so I asked him how honeybees actually make honey. My father said, “The honeybees come and land on a flower-branch. They bring all the petals back into their chest or large pot, and the queen slowly, gently walks over them. The petals which she passes over change into honey.”

In every room of our house, we had two or three honey-hives inside wooden chests or clay grain storage canisters, which we used to call tombake. From dawn to dusk, the bees would bring all sorts of flowers back to our house in their wings. The bees were so beautiful with the petals stuck to their sides! I used to sleep in the second-story room, with my bed placed right up against the back of one of the tombake. At night I’d look out the window at the sky, filled with stars. I’d look at the Layla and Majnun stars, to see how close together they were. And then I’d listen to the humming of the bees.

Sometimes I’d gently knock on one of the tombaka’s boards, and the bees’ buzzing and humming would get a little louder. I’d tell myself that the queen must have walked over quite a lot of the petals by now, and many of them would have been converted to honey. I’d wish that I was a queen bee, and could convert petals into honey.

My father also told me that honeybees are very noble creatures. If a house should become irreligious, or if discord should enter it, or if a cruel king should come to rule over the country, the bees would flee that house and run off into the wilderness. The honeybees’ beautiful prophet was so sensitive that he could not help but cry. So they would take the prophet’s tears, and God would give them the power to turn them into honey. My father told me that if we want to keep bees, we need to cultivate purity and holiness in our hearts as well. I heard this from my father, and it stuck in my memory. The moments of my life passed, like bees in the embrace of flower petals. Then, when I had gotten to be somewhat of a youth, and I was gradually approaching the doorstep of maturity, and my voice had deepened just a little, but I had not yet dreamed the sort of dreams I read about in the Maniyyat al-Musalli, my father removed a honeycomb slat from one of the clay beehives. There were black bees walking all over the white honeycomb. And right there in the middle of one big white honeycomb, there were two pods. My father told me that in each of these pods, there is a new queen. If we let them stay there, two new queens will be born in this hive, and they’ll destroy the order of this colony. The new queens will each take a number of bees with them when they leave, and the colony will become weak as a result. My father took out a knife, and gently slit the pods such that the queen larvae inside would not be cut. He wet some of the earth which had fallen off the hive. It smelled so nice; I used to love both the sweet smell of honey and the swell smell of wet earth. My father closed up the hive, filling up the cracks in the slat with the moist earth.

A week later, thick swarms of bees emerged from the holes of that very same tombaka, and began flying around through the air. They kept swarming and swarming. They were wanting to fly off to that distant forest, but my father prevented them by throwing some small pebbles at them.

The bees ended up flying to a mulberry tree standing next to our house. They formed sort of a swarm on one the high mulberry branches, all tangled up with each other. The sun’s rays caught them, and as they fluttered their wings, they looked very beautiful indeed. Every now

and then the wind would shake it, and I thought it would wreck this colony just as surely as if children threw rocks at it. I’m not sure how, but it didn’t break up. My father climbed up the mulberry tree, carrying a sort of vessel he fashioned out of a dry, hollowed-out gourd in order to capture the bees. I climbed up the mulberry after him, too. My father searched around in the mass of bees for the queen, and after a few minutes of hunting he found her. He picked her up very, very gently, and told me to take the scissors out of his pocket. I got out the scissors, and clipped her wings. My father placed her into the hollow gourd, gradually put handful after handful of bees in there after her, and climbed down the tree with the vessel full of bees. Then he put this new queen’s already sizable colony into another empty tombaka, giving them a few honeycomb slats as well so that they could produce honey for themselves after a few nights. I asked my father, “A few days ago, you cut out two pods from that other tombaka; so how did this third queen get born?” Laughing, my father said, “I left that queen alone, because that other tombaka was very strong. It seemed to me that we could make another hive out of it.” Then, not two days had passed when the hive went into an uproar once again. A small swarm separated itself from the colony, and assembled itself on a nearby wall. My father found the queen inside it, but this time he did not clip its wings. He handed her to me, telling me to take her in the palm of my hand gently, so as not to kill her, since the death of a queen is like the death of a domain’s king. I took the queen gently into the palm of my hand, as she fluttered her wings softly; and this fluttering of her wings tickled my heart as well. My father told me, “Take this queen to the green wheat field and set her free.” A question started rising up in my heart. My father started saying something else to me, but I cut him off and asked, “Father, you said that you let that other queen alone so she could start a new colony. So why aren’t you leaving this queen alone to do the same?” My father smiled and said, “You ask so many questions!” Then, answering my question, he said, “Two reasons. Number one: this queen has attracted only a very small number of other bees to her. That is, a queen should have many, many subjects, but this one had very few. And number two, that first colony would have gotten too weak. I just hadn’t seen this queen’s pod. Sometimes, a queen’s pod can be in some hidden corner, and you just don’t see it…” My question was answered; I left the house quite happily. I felt so important, since I had the queen bee with me. I arrived at the green wheat field. I mixed my bare feet into the pure green field. My blistered bare feet bruised the delicate, green stalks, and a sweet grassy smell rose up into the air, a smell just as much as sweet to me as honey and damp earth. Slowly and carefully, I opened my hand. The long, golden, silky queen was walking around on my palm. Her wings were unharmed, but, God only knows why, she didn’t fly off. My heart softened to her. I slowly and gently blew on my palm, and she flew off into the embrace of the green wheat field. I returned home happily. And I asked my father, “Why did you make me take her far from the house, to the green field?” Smiling again, my father replied, “Precisely because it’s far from the house, and the other tombake. If we had set her free around here, she would have probably entered one of the tombake and ruined an already established dynasty. But on the other hand, killing a queen is a great sin, equivalent to regicide. It struck me that this queen was very delicate, and that she’d be happier among the green and delicate wheat than in some other grey place. My greatest hope was that she’d maybe find another regiment of bees whose queen had died, or who had no queen, and that she could become their queen, and revive a devastated dynasty.

To this day, I sort of suspect that the words of my poems and songs are those bees whose golden queen was let loose and lost in this green field of poetry and beauty. I’ve always wandered in search of this golden queen. And my fairy companion has told me that she has seen

this queen. I’ve taken hold of the skirt-hem of my imagination and my poetry’s fairy-spirit, and she’s led me through countless islands of beauty and imagination, but I still haven’t caught up with her yet. After every journey, the fairy gives me a hearty laugh, and invites me on another quest. Sometimes I would have my doubts—what if that queen isn’t in my fairy companion’s palm? If, God willing, I were able to open up her hand tomorrow, maybe I would find that queen, and set up a little kingdom for myself.

With love,

Karwan.

1. To the Poet, a Letter from the Wilderness

Greeting, my dear Karwan, greetings

Tell me, my friend, have you forgotten me

And my burnt, sooty moments?

My weary, exhausted camel-driver friend!

You're not coming for me, you thoughtless one; but I'm coming after you

I hear the jangle of your camel's bells

I hear that ghazal, with the hue of blood,

Which you dedicated to that martyred shepherd.

These days you aren't writing joyous songs

I realize your pen's nib is broken

Amidst these blue stars, your little poet's heart

Is breaking on the crescent moon's black peak

Since your blistered, cracked feet were red with blood

Today my north wind kissed that mountain grass

May your cup of wine never be emptied

Come; all my soma has blossomed for you!

The golden-petalled honeybees are coming;

Your poem-letters, wandering here and there

With the cages of your phrases shattered,

The mountain birds are wandering all over

I've got some infidel songs for you;

Come on, turn a few of them Muslim

Some of them could become queens for you;

Some of them, maids and servants

I realize you're very empty-handed these days

The poetry-fish is slipping through your fingers

Enough thirst hasn’t yet awakened in your heart

For the Lord's wine-cup to move across your lips

When I lay my head to sleep, I dream of you;

You're wandering through the cemetery of Nasir Bagh refugee camp

You're like a bouquet of tulips

You're wandering across my heart's scar tissue

I even realize how they've sniped at you

Critics have paid you little mind

May the rose of your poet's heart not wilt from upset;

I've seen the red dewdrops of your tears

Your eyes are filled with the color of your heart

You don't speak; you look for songs

You watch high and low, like a white hawk,

For poetry-doves to seize in your talons

Come; come by night, and I'll make a poet of you,

If there are silent moments in the chalice of the full moon

Whisper a coo coo in the moon-dove's ear

When you remember childhood moments

Like God's holy green book

Underneath a canopy of white moonbeams

By God, if you’d look at my green forest now,

I’m canopied with the stars in the moonlight

I'm bathing in the perfume of green sandalwood

I'm lying here in the night like a green serpent.

No, no; the moon is standing above my head;

I'm lying surrounded by a garland of stars

And above those brilliant white stars

Embedded in your tawny camel's blankets;

Beyond them, my hand is parting the pines

Never before penetrated by moonlight

At dawn, just like a golden boat, my sun

Is gliding across the river of my green embrace

The contented spirit of this martyred poet

Is wandering through the ayat of Ya Sin

Just like Stinger missiles, brutish falcons

Are seizing the wings and necks of

Churning-winged mountain doves

Like soft, delicate airplanes.

And that platoon of flowers, standing tall

Which were blasted by the Russian pilot--

You’d think the martyrs rose again

And took the form of sulfur-smoke yellow flowers once again

A young shepherd is adeptly climbing up to them

And lovingly bringing back bouquets

He’s kissing their wounds with dry lips

He’s bringing a gift for his sister, a young bride

In salutation to my wet oaks, sandalwoods,

My violet-bushes, green from the rains

No one can pinpoint the limits of my beauty

I am simply a formless, boundless beauty

Do you remember those greenish pines

When the rockets plunged deep inside their heart?

Whose white breast was looted and broken,

Into whose boughs was plunged a red-hot spike?

Now those branches, recovered from that wound,

Scatter clove-scent as the morning breeze blows through them

And if the north wind should flirt with them,

Then it scatters the jangling of green bangles

At night a nightingale sits on this branch

Remembering the melodies of the Psalms

Creating an apocalypse with its burnt voice

You’d think it was recollecting the secrets of Mt. Sinai

It gives out a Bilali cry at the white dawn

As it recites the Qur’an in a sweet tongue

And all the universe resounds with applause

As it recites the verse of al-Rahman in melody

Come here; take hold of my skirt-hem

I’ll give you as much love as you could possibly want

See, its lines will be like the wandering of peacocks

When I put some green blood in your white poem

If you need epic-ness; if you need awe

I’ve got the wild eyes of a clouded leopard

And for the delicacy of gentle grace,

Look; I’ve got the timidity of a doe’s eyes

When I spread my north wind through the willows

You will forget the scent of your beloved’s tresses

You’ll swing the sledgehammer of your imagination

You’ll break and forget these idols of stone

I’ll bring you a spirit, O poet,

In the form of a lost Eden of fairies

I’ll weave for you the golden threads of the sun

In the form of nomad-tents filled with songs

If you kiss the fairy-spirit of music

Come here; take a few steps ahead of yourself

You hear the sound of green bangles, don’t you?

They’re shouting out naras for you, Karwan!

I’ll show you such islands of beauty

That even a poet-man couldn’t imagine

In the heart of just one of your Pashto tappas exists

Something not present in the burlap sack of any other language

Come; let me take you on flights to distant places

That you might be able to unfurl your wings in the sunrise

Your lungs will inhale the breath of beauty

The imprint of your art will be left

Come here; I’ll make a poet out of you

Bright stars are wandering through the blue water

You’ll lift them up in the golden afternoon light

When all of your poem-letters begin to wander

Send me a letter; it’ll arrive at once!

Yes; it’ll arrive carried by a dove of inspiration

If the hawks don’t plunder it; send me an answer

With a dove of green Bagram

I offer my loving praises to the lovers of your tradition

My apron-pocket is full of green prayers and well-wishes

I accept that the tradition will become one of candles

My rucksack is also full of martyrs

The lovers and the sages of the tradition

Will raise the banner of a Sufistic society

Which brought forth the ecstatic likes of Mansur

They’ll raise a banner in the name of his wine-cup

Look- have you forgotten me? You’ve forgotten many things

I’m saying that you should come one more time

On all the ancient bridges lying around you

My dear Karwan, you’ll definitely come once again!

Wait up for me a little, traveler!

---------------

My martyred friend's checkered scarf

Is tied around my waist

I've come, just a second earlier,

From the heavy, great war

The mouths of the cliffs echo

Filled with the crashing of swords

In my saddlebag, I've brought

The head of that dragon

Which plucked that orphan like a fruit

Off the branch of happiness

---------------

The straps of my sandals are sliced up;

My feet are full of thorns

In my breast I've brought with me

Broken-off lance heads

My caravan's camels are exhausted

I've brought back my martyrs on them

My torches in the night

Are these reed mats, glowing red with blood.

---------------

What’s wrong with these two ears of yours?

Why aren't you listening to this song of mine?

Can't you see I'm following you?

I'm kissing the dust of your feet

You've had your fill of men's funeral banquets

While I, with my snow-white heart

Have drank cup after cup

Of black antimony, worrying about my beloved.

All of this is about my dear friends

Who have now been turned to statues

---------------

It's not like I just came for the hell of it

With plenty of time stashed in my pocket

Just wait up for me a little, traveler

I've got stories stashed in my pocket

I've barbed every shout of mine

With the scorpion-sting of sobbing.

Instead of water, I have drunk

From the flask of my filled-up little heart

Every scar closes it up a little more

But my heart is so full of love

Slay it with conscience's sword

If there's any doubt about it

---------------

One evening a friend of mine came

With my heart in his hand

I don't know know whether it was of love or of vengefulness,

But he came with a knife in his hand also

He said, this heart of yours is good for nothing

Go find a new heart from somewhere

All your half-baked songs-

Find them a tender heart somewhere

One which feeds on love songs

Go find the kind of heart

Which steals kisses from the stars

Go find a heart which worships the sun.

---------------

I said, Oh sure! As if hearts

Can be bought four to a rupee;

As if, in the marketplace which is your two eyes

You can pick out just anyone at all to love.

I’ll pay in full with the cash of my sorrows

If songs are what sells on credit

I'll buy a forceful ghazal

If ghazals can be had through force

I’ll just sacrifice this sobbing of mine

If music and revelry is what sells

---------------

This set loose the pigeon of my heart

Then my friend zoomed past me like a hawk

That one, whom I had loved from way back when

Left in a very new sort of way

My heart fell off the edge of a cliff

Oh! it broke, and went silent

This gemstone split up into fragments.

Could be it’s well and truly useless now.

Thirsty for the eyes of its beloved,

It went off on a path through the wild unirrigated country.

These four planets orbiting two circling suns

Left their colorful, sensuous mutual orbit.

---------------

Traveler, that night

I cried out to God so much!

But on that day I didn't

Cry nearly as much as I have today

That was the very same day;

Perhaps you've forgotten,

You were a child, if you remember;

Much time has passed;

When that platoon showed up

In our village; that troop of young-men

Red-lipped beautiful youths

With lion-whiskers and wild locks

And black, penetrating eyes like gwargwaras And halfway maroon like the kirkanIntoxicated from their cries of the takbir

From drums and atan dancing;Do you remember those six young-men?

Whose clapping grew hot and fast

Who whipped their turban-tails around

Who slicked back their long hair

When they gave off those clipped cries,

When they drew out the final syllables of their tappas,With a single tappa for a martyr

They moistened the whole world's eyes!

Those ones who were all saying, God!

You have put out the eyes of death itself!

Who, with their hashish pipe

Turned their own eyes red and bloodshot.

They were sitting next to the spring

On the bank of the spring there was a poplar

In the poplar sat a turtle-dove

Cooing again and again.

My tawny camel was following behind me,

Its bells jangling.

They all lifted their eyes up at me,

And inside them sat a city of love.

Within the heart of that city

There was a caravan loaded with tappasAnd the clothes on that crowd of strangers

Were woven out of sacrifice and lamentation.

But right to its pillaged heart went

A sorrowful strain of sitars.

And around this city of love

A great serpent encircled itself.

Those six young-men came out,

Hunting this dragon.

---------------

Hey! What are you doing, falling asleep?

Traveler, wake up!

The story goes in another direction

Calm down, oh strong one.

I'll straighten out a little onto the path

And you do the same.

Here; there's some sugar in my pocket

Sweeten your mouth a little

Help take a little of the story's heavy load

Onto your own shoulders

That way, we'll shorten the path

Of this story, which got long and carried away.

Are you a tired-out child,

That you're getting impatient?

The story has to be set up before it can emerge!

Your heart's become nothing more than a wooden nickel.

In the middle of this story

There are many deserts, mountains, crags,

Arrows ripped from chests,

And arms chopped off by swords

It's very reckless,

Fighting with dragons.

In the middle part, houses turn into cemeteries

Emptying out filled beds.

We'll leave aside this middle part of the story

By God, it gets really bitter...

So anyway, it's hardly even twilight;

Not yet fully night

Droplets of the dragon's venom

Will form themselves out of white stars

And you'll see its teeth

Made from some other stars

All the wounds of the young-men

Will form themselves out of golden stars

You'll see all these stars

Fighting with each other

Some will flee from their orbit

Some will fall to earth

They'll smash on the cliffs

They'll fall into the springs

And there, inside the two halves of their husks,

As their kernels swell up, life will emerge.

---------------

Don't be afraid in the middle of the story

I'm just coming to the end now

Your dog is barking; drive it away

I'm coming to the story's destination

I'll just get the story moving,

Then I'll come to the true point of it.

You were a child, O traveler

The weather-hardy camels walked in a line

Their necks curving,

Their bells jangling

There was a bale of wheat,

And another load, of arrows.

If only we weren't subject to the hell of hunger

But this trade in arrows was a good living;

We were there for hunting, nothing else.

Hunting what, you'd ask?

The grand dragon of lore.

You were there too, sitting on a bale

Chewing on a sugar cane

When the camel stretched its neck toward you,

You'd give it a slap with it

Then, in the sky, an airplane

Unexpectedly roared into the area

Sounding almost as if, struggling under its load,

A wounded she-camel had collapsed

Bringing forth a bomb-child,

That pregnant camel gave birth

The bomb fell onto a mountain peak

But the satisfaction of hearing its cry was absent;

Maybe the mother was malnourished

Or she just miscarried.

You took the sugarcane on top of your arm

And held it like a rocket.

And the index finger of your left hand,

You bent like a trigger.

You let out a laughing shout

And the pilot caught a look at you.

---------------

He stubbornly tightened his lips,

That master of iron,

That one who poured bitter poison

Into every one of your sugarcane's segments

In the sky, his airplane

Curved around in your direction

He aimed his cannon

At your sugarcane and your shoulder

Just before shooting,

He sweetened the mouth of his gunpowder heart.

Then, on that mountain, whose peaks

Reached almost to the sky,

Against which cloud-camels

Formed and broke apart,

Right at its sharp peak,

Six real camels showed up.

And while the pilot was confused,

Their deadly eye got a sweet target.

With the blink of their eyes

A shot crashed into the mountain

Just like a sledgehammer, it smashed

One of the mountain's round boulders

And a sharp sliver of granite

Grabbed the hawk-plane with its beak

Like a scythe in its chest

You’d swear it shrieked hysterically

As it turned around in the air

It started zig-zagging

The airplane broke up

And flew right into the cliffs

On its wings, monkeys

Jumped around, screaming.

Some particularly mischievous monkeys

Pissed all over it.

We also heard

The roaring of the airplane.

Like a bride, out of happiness

Tears filled up our eyes

Deep inside our hearts,

Rock-sugar crystals broke apart

Traveler, do you remember

When that sugarcane was on your shoulder?

At that moment, that shoulder of yours

Seemed even sweeter than the sugarcane

We all said to you,

Congratulations on your shot!

God be with you; in these mountains

May you go far in life!

But then, unexpectedly,

A state came over you

Tears welled up in your eyes

And a sort of awe came over you

Like a poet, a rare type

Of poetics came over you

We told you legends;

But reality came down upon you.

In an instant, you lightened

Your shoulder of the sugarcane's already light load

And when the camel bent its neck toward you,

You sweetened its mouth with it.

You jumped off the bale

With a purposeful sort of leap,

And freed the camel's foot of its bell-chains

And immediately, with a crunch of gravel,

The camels in the caravan stopped and waited for you

In a blink or two of the eye,

Tears welled up in your eyes

You let loose some broken sobs

And your broken words

Embedded themselves in the corpse.

Your red lips, sliced up from the sugarcane

Quivered like two rose petals

The words expressed by your eyes

Were undulating, surging.

Those six flowering trees

Had seemed to metamorphose into the belly of a Leviathan

But they had been able

To survive that Leviathan, and it passed by.

The six camels came down from up above

There was just one herder going with them

Six fringed shawls, and through each of them

Shone a tangled shower of light rays.

Through our white shining tears

The boughs of an arghawan tree blossomed.

And every heart wrapped up in those shawls

Was the object of my love.

---------------

Come here, let me kiss you

My beautiful traveler,

The shadow of my songs!

Oh you, my broken heart!

These six travelers'

Seventh companion is you.

The provisions fueling the journey

Of Karwan's ghazals and folk songs

is you.