Jahanzad, down in the street before your door

Here I am, burnt-out Hasan the Potter

This morning in the bazaar when I saw you

At old Yusuf the perfumer’s shop

In you glance was that brilliance

I’ve longed for, wandering nine years in madness

During that time

I never looked back

At my ailing pots -

Pots formed by my deft hands,

Lifeless creatures of clay, color, oilglaze

They whispered:

“Where is Hasan the Potter now?

He left us, his own creations

He created us, then turned away like the gods!”

Jahanzad, nine years passed for me

As time would pass in a buried city;

Clay in the clay-vats

With its fragrance that used to ravish me

Lay stone-hard

Flagon and flask, jug and cup, candlestick, vase

Props of my trivial life, of my art

Lay broken

I myself, Hasan the Potter, mud-mired, dusty-haired, naked

Besied my wheel, hair disheveled, head on knees

Like some grieving demigod, from fantasized

Clay-and-nothing I molded pliant pots out of dreams.

Jahanzad, nine years ago

You were a child, but you knew

That I, Hasan the Potter

Had seen in your talisman eyes, you sky-warming eyes

Brilliance

Which made my body and sould an open road

For cloud and moon

Janhanzad, the dream-colored Baghdad night

That bank of River Tigris

That boat, the boatman’s closed eyes

For a worn-out, grief-burdened potter

One night was the charged amber

His static being clings to, even now.

His soul, his shape

But that night’s flavor was a river-wave in which

Hasan the Potter sank and has not come up.

Jahanzad, in those days, day after day

That ill-starred woman came

When she saw me by the wheel, mud-mired, head on knees

She shook me by the shoulders -

(that wheel which had been, year after year, my life sole prop!)

she shook me by the shoulders:

“Hasan, look at you desolate house

how will the children’s hollow stomachs be filled?

Love-struck Hasan

Love is a rich man’s game

Hasan, look around at your house!”

In my ears this mournful voice was like

A call to a drowning man in whirlpool.

Those heaps of tears were flower-beds, no doubt

But I, Hasan the Potter, lived among ruins

In a fantasy-city where not

A voice, a movement

A flying bird’s shadow

Not a trace of my life existed.

Jahanzad, here now in you street

Her in the cold-colored darkness of night

I stand before you door

Head and hair disordered

From the window those spell-drowned talisman eyes

Flance at me once again

Time, Jahanzad, it the wheel aon which like flagon and flask, cup,

candlestick, vase

Humans are made and unmade

I am a human but

Those nine years that passed in the mold of grief!

Hasan the Potter is now a dust-mound without

Even a hint of moisture.

Jahanzad, this morning in the bazaar

At Yusuf the Perfumer’s shop, your eyes

Spoke once again

Their brilliant mischief

Calls forth again in the dust-mound a quiver of wetness

Perhaps to turn the dust to clay

Who knows the scope of longing, Jahanzad, but

If you want, I go back to being

That potter whose pots

Were the pride of every house and street, city and town

Whose pot shone in the homes of rich and poor

Who knows the scope of longing, Jahanzad, but

If you want, I will go back to my forsaken pots

To the dried-out vats of clay-and-nothing

To the props of my life, my art

So from this clay-and-nothing, color and oil glaze, I

Can again strike sparks

That light up the ruins of hearts.