Our poet Antony Johae finds essences of principled beauty in the women of the ancient city of Shiraz. On this Day 810 of the Daily Poems ‘At Shiraz’ is a longish poem but it’s a beauty in itself …
At Shiraz
for Thérèse
Here, long before settlement,
Earth’s plates shifted and crushed up great mountains
taking their timely shape from Caspian wind,
high ice, spring erosion, and the sun’s cracking heat.
In more time, from human encounters:
hewers of stone, builders of pillared palaces,
makers of tombs cut into rock faces
engraved with rulers’ epitaphs.
After Cyrus, Alexander, Seleucus and Ardashir had marked them
and passed, came nomads from western sands
to settle their message in Persian lands.
Ritual fires were quenched, the dead parted from vultures,
years re-measured and peaceful prayers pronounced
five times from dawn till dark
towards Zam-Zam, Kaaba and Holy Stone.
Arcaded mosques with slim minarets went up
and palaces pink and purple
patterned with forms, flora, beasts, birds and people.
Rilled gardens were planned and planted
which after rain when rivers ran muddy
filled with flowers in the fresh breeze.
Crafted carpets took their shapes from them,
perfumes their aroma.
All these seem like signs of divine presences
as I walk with my wife in April sun
– essences of principled beauty
so overwhelming in the women
as to cause them now to be covered.
In Shah’s time I gazed at them veil-less
caught in close-up on Time’s cover,
girls in Spring so rare as to be recalled in Fall.
Now in this garden I see stone stools set in pairs
where couples court touchingly
as once courtiers fashioned verse for their ladies
and ordered gifts of silver for them.
With Hâfiz’s tight lines in mind –
ghazals laced in light love, luminous –
we walk arm in arm through long paved paths
I imagining you ever more beautiful
with head scarf-covered.
Antony Johae