Return Poem by Rafey Habib

The moon turned over Hindustan,
A foreigner wept:
“Consider, Lady Moon, with a queen’s sobriety
The poet, stood on this untilled soil
Watching your wilful promise
Steal across the sky;
He, in palaces, has known your bliss;
Has sung of your magic in his kiss.

Now, as you turn over Hindustan,
Where can you go?
All above is spread an ancient night;
Great fortresses guard the sleeping past;
Your palaces echo no more
With dignity of imperial claims;
The pearls that behung your walls
Are all gone, stolen;
The anguish of an imprisoned king, his
Royal gaze across a narrow lake toward sunlight:
All locked in the stone temples
Of your history.

I have seen the foreign faces
Drenched in the colour of my own conscience:
Long, regretful plains, sinking
In their indolent richness:
My poor city with its stallkeepers
Crawling towards dawn,
Your unending labour wearies me.
What, Simaitha, was in your cold Greek heart
When Delphis’ lips left you?

Consider, Lady Moon, the warriors
Once banqueting on this silken soil;
The “maiden” moving through poets’ verses,
Pouring wine into their dreams:
Her silhouette is stilled in your light.

Who is this beautiful woman
Who pays me an homage of kinship;
What scent hangs wild, like flowers, from her hair;
I am dulled in images of the world
Fed from creation’s sleep.

She, who whispered to me
Her history
Has fallen out of your
Design;
I cannot help but smile for her,
For us, who ventured to spoil
The unlittered clarity of the old vision:
Consider, Lady Moon, when I shall have lost her.

Queen Moon, you upon whom
Kings have thrown their gaze,
Look now upon a pilgrim’s homeless way.
I wonder what the imam thinks beneath his Arabic
Where time has taught the tongue to sing
Faster than the heart can follow;
I have knelt before each doctrine
Voiced from your past; I have washed my feet
In your pools, amid your gardens,
I have felt the edge of deceit
Slide along the moment of each act.

Consider, Lay Moon,
My Hindustan:
The false gods who wait over her,
As you turn toward the Western world:
Consider, Lady Moon, whence came my love.