The Lovers In Isfahan Poem by Daniel Brick

The Lovers in Isfahan cried out
in pain as if they were one throat
giving voice to a Grief that seared
every heart beating in sync
with its absent Beloved...
To call them absent was their last
shred of hope before that immense cry
imposed silence on all the wine shops,
all the Poetry recitals, all the inspired
talk. Poetry itself fell into silence,
a deep dark region where words lost meaning
and language was bereft of beauty. Only
a thin thread of truth coiled around things
that matter to lovers and poets.

The most deeply affected Lovers were stunned
into a vast sorrow, their emotions dangling.
No tears fell from their eyes, which turned
inward to assess their blighted Inner Gardens.
They limped helplessly, calling out the dearest
word of their vast vocabulary, their memories
torturing them with desire upon desire.

A smaller group of Lovers, cursed by the burden
of worldly wisdom, knew love was not really LOVE,
but only an approximation of LOVE, a brave human
attempt to create a thing of Eternity out of
mortal material. These Lovers bowed their heads,
closed their eyes, and walked unerringly -
to the nearest Mosque, where they prayed and prayed,
without the benefit of wine or dance.


Ahmad, a carper weaver from Shiraz, gathered
the remnants around himself. He attracted those
strong enough to endure sorrow with clenched will,
and those ever quiet ones who retained a drop of
patience in their souls. They bunched together!
They rushed to the Tavern of Ahmad's brother-in-law.
Immediately wine released a poem from each of their
company. Within an hour they could not tell the wine
from the verse, so intoxicating was their wild joy
in the space of deepest loss. In the fourth hour,
a dance began, the first in many days and nights.
Ahmad himself led the dance with the grace of an angel.
And the line of Lovers, convoluted, criss-crossing,
circling, resembled the patterns Ahmad wove into carpets.
He was insistently leading the Lovers to the center of
a vast invisible carpet, a place free of sorrow and loss,
a place where miracles begin. And then, one by one by one,
each Lover found himself dancing next to his Beloved. Cries
of mortal delight alternated with praises to Allah. Wine
spread its joy to the limits of intoxication to a condition
of complete oneness of Lover and Beloved, of Sorrow and Joy,
of Absence and Presence. And Time and Eternity joined,
like a vast tent sheltering all true lovers in a cosmic dance.