Sandstorm Poems

Shishi and I, just draped our doll,
Giggling, in the shade of a sacred scroll.

Stood by the well and eyed us long,
...

An assault of cabbage leaves on the pavement
Tries vainly to cover up the manholes;
Splattered egg yolk on the serrated kerb:
Two men look from the window. Wind blows.
...

CHAPTER I

I cannot blame old Israel yet,
For I am not a sage—
I shall not know until I get
...

When your thoughts still keep me awake,
I have no one besides stars and moon to converse.

All your promises fly like fireflies,
...

In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shrad of glass,
a cactus thron,
...

Ah, better the thud of the deadly gun, and the crash of the bursting shell,
Than the terrible silence where drought is fought out there in the western hell;
...

The desert sand had covered most
of Ali's scrawny body,
his camel, down and bellowing
the sandstorm was ferocious.
...

<i>For Justin Clemens

Fin-de-Siècle</i> France
much more congenial
...

by Zhu Zhu
(translated by Denis Mair)

I
...

Swirling around in the desert sky,
Where not even the ravens choose to fly.
Down off the mountains in a furious gale,
Darkening the desert sky so pale.
...

Memories
Flooding me
Like sandstorm
...

What shakes the trees so violently? ’Tis Wind;
What moves the clouds hither/ thither? ’Tis Wind;
What takes the tornado around? ’Tis Wind;
What brings the sandstorm on the earth? ’Tis Wind.
...

Sand arose
covering everything
A windstorm
shut our eyes
...

The sandstorm swirls, pebbles and sand
Hitting dour walls
Dance, dance the slow music
Elements appeasing music
...

It’s a stop-over on a Spring day
when, walking through the bush, I see them.
Bees. Wild bees, already clustered,
...

Walled behind thoughts of yesterday, gradually turning away
from past tears, an individual stands alone in the middle
of a desert sandstorm.
...

'Oh! the howling of desert winds
You are blowing so fierce again
As you tried to restrain the minds
Of tough camels and sturdy men
...

Myths and spells of a faraway land
Where sun is like fire and skin is tanned
Travelling through the land of gods and pharaohs
My heart's pierced from love's arrows
...

I saw a traveller coming from the desert
wrapped in white cloth
and the man greeted me, asked for water
and told me about Ozymandias, the great king
...

Day, I leave this world to dust.
Another shall return as promised:
If you don't believe a bird can fly,
Then why hold it caged till it dies?
...

something touched me
deep in the forest of slumber,
arousing senses to the possibility
all was not lost on Earth's
...

Curseth thee o ye knowledge junkie,
For the peace of thine lord eludes you,
From loving hands of his concord grace,
Thou art cast into turmoil of pursuit,
...

Sandstorm churning in my mind tonight,
driven by the wind of change,
and I know… it's not that easy.
Drove a million miles and it is all the same,
...

What does it do to free their souls?
From emancipation, what paroles
the shackles that kept them toiling?
Even now, they are leaving.
...

eating the sandstorm and the overripe tangerines

I sent my poems out to the oasis
...

When your thoughts still keep me awake,
I have no one besides stars and moon to converse.

All your promises fly like fireflies,
...

Memories
Flooding me
Like sandstorm
...

The loss of god and my demons,
A time of distinct longing for all things unearthly,
Scattered illusions of unknown desires,
The restlessness of the soul, I feel ghostly.
...

Geneticist as driver, down the gene
codes in, let's say, a topless coupe
and you keep expecting bends,

real tyre-testers on tight
mountain passes, but instead it's dead
straight, highway as runway,

helix unravelled as vista,
as vanishing point. Keep your foot
down. This is a finite desert.

You move too fast to read it,
the order of the rocks, the cacti,
roadside weeds, a blur to you.

Every hour or so, you pass a shack
which passes for a motel here:
tidy faded rooms with TVs on

for company, the owner pacing out
his empty parking lot. And after
each motel you hit a sandstorm

thick as fog, but agony.
Somewhere out there are remnants
of our evolution, genes for how

to fly south, sense a storm,
hunt at night, how to harden
your flesh into hide or scales.

These are the miles of dead code.
Every desert has them.
You are on a mission to discover

why the human heart still slows
when divers break the surface,
why mermaids still swim in our dreams.
...

                  

Screwing the distance in this weird wind of dark
...