Who Are You? Poem by Ahmad Shiddiqi

(dedicated to people who love American poetry)

radical
individual
Amherst
Calvinist village
Massachusetts

unmarried
love nature
endless inspiration
from birds, animal, plants
changing seasons of New England

lonely
sensitive
Bible
Shakespeare
Classic Mythology

clean
clearest
interesting
challenging
mocking life

joyous
brooding
boldly frank
celebratory
witty, sardonic

very shy
introvert
unknown
unrecognized
greatest poems

simple style
fullest imagination
more modern
more innovative
than Walt Whitman

a hermit
a semi-invalid
poems of pure
a heartbroken introvert
a neurotic agoraphobic

never use two words
if one word is enough
combining real things
and the abstract ideas
into compact blending

exploring
dark mind
hidden desire
dramatize death
and the tombs

a bee
a flower
common objects
excellent intelligent
contradiction of paradoxes

unconventional broken rhyming meter
use of dashes, random capitalization
illuminating the keen insight
into the human condition
concise imagery

high humor
very vast deeds
numbers at poems
many strange strips
many capital letters

the juxtaposition
meaningful of words
and worthy phrases
use paradox to make
tremendous effects

mystic and haunted
sensitivity to nature
weird approaches
exotic sensuality
shining brilliancy

The murmur of a bee
Elysium is as far as to
Wild Nights! Wild Nights!
I felt a funeral, in my Brain
Heart, we will forget him!

Come slowly, Eden!
Nature rarer uses yellow
I’m nobody. Who are you?
The heart asks pleasure first
The Tint I cannot take – is best

On this wondrous sea
Who robbed the woods
Delight becomes pictorial
An awful tempest mashed the air
We like March, his shoes are purple

A dying tiger – moaned for drink
Two butterflies went out at noon
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
To my quick ear the leaves conferred
Presentiment is long shadow on the lawn

(inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poems)