@ I Would Make You A Poem Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Blow up the clouds in blue sky
Bring in the night, in slow repose
The evening, the tavern’s door, and
Again from your hands of rose petals
Some red wine from the best, O saki! *

O saki, I would make you a poem
A song, never sung before, a dance
On the surface of ocean like a dew’s
Like a feather in the air, and like
A fish swims in the water of a spring.

From the half veil, O saki, from beneath
Your eyes like gems, like doves, some ancient rite.
From the shadowy dark of the eyelashes, heavy
And drunk. From the lips, speaking of wine cups.
For the sake of old times, for the sake of
A thousand years of distance; for the sake of love
Which I can only see in the mirrors, in illusions.

O saki, fill in the cup from the other corner of earth,
For the sake of great maestros of verse, and
For the sake of my ruined past; the candlelit streets,
Of a haunting desire, from the apparel of fairies
From the aroma of jasmine, from the burning incense.

-For Roshan Mumtaz

*Cup-bearer: Widely used in eastern poetry, a symbol of ecstatic inebriation and ultimate feminine beauty, both mundane and divine.

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
April 12,2013.

Omar Khayyam: M.A.R. Chughtai, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India.