Mimi Khalvati Poems

Let them be, the battles you fought, in silence.
Bury your shame, the worst you thought, in silence.

At last my Beloved has haggled with death.
...

Mr Khalvati? Larger than life he was;
too large to die so they wired him up on a bed.
Small as a soul he is on the mountain ledge.

Lids gone thin as a babe's. If it's mist he sees
it's no mist he knows by name. Can you hear me,
Mr Khalvati? Larger than life he was

and the death he dies large as the hands that once
drowned mine and the salt of his laugh in the wave.
Small as a soul he is on the mountain ledge.

Can you squeeze my hand? (Ach! Where are the hands
I held in mine to pull me back to the baize?)
Mr Khalvati? Larger than life he was

with these outstretched hands that squeezing squeeze
thin air. Wired he is, tired he is and there,
small as a soul he is on the mountain ledge.

No nudging him out of the nest. No one to help him
fall or fly, there's no coming back to the baize.
Mr Khalvati? Larger than life he was.
Small as a soul he is on the mountain ledge.
...

It's a night for nostalgia he said.
I felt I was missing something, some
echo of nights we must have shared
in separate alleyways, far off home

rain drew him back to, or clouds,
or the particular light behind rain.
I was nostalgic for words, last words
of a poem I would read on the train.

There was a power cut today. I lit
three candles, ate lamb and read
by candlelight. The beauty of it
was too lonely so I went to bed.

It rained then. In the daylight dark.
I lay there till I heard a click
and voices. When the lights came back
it was like a conjuring trick -

there they were, the animated creatures
of my life I had thought inanimate
objects. And I was the one conjured
out of their dream of a dark planet.
...

after Hafez

However large earth's garden, mine's enough.
One rose and the shade of a vine's enough.

I don't want more wealth, I don't need more dross.
The grape has its bloom and it shines enough.

Why ask for the moon? The moon's in your cup,
a beggar, a tramp, for whom wine's enough.

Look at the stream as it winds out of sight.
One glance, one glimpse of a chine's enough.

Like the sun in bazaars, streaming in shafts,
any slant on the grand design's enough.

When you're here, my love, what more could I want?
Just mentioning love in a line's enough.

Heaven can wait. To have found, heaven knows,
a bed and a roof so divine's enough.

I've no grounds for complaint. As Hafez says,
isn't a ghazal that he signs enough?
...

Under the giant planes beside the gate where we said goodbye,
the one bare trunk where squirrels flatten themselves on bark

side by side with a voluminous plane whose ivy outraces branch,
under the two great planes where we stood vaguely looking round

since it was a clear night, the street empty and we, small gaggle,
newly intimate but standing a yard apart, keeping our voices low

though they carried bright as bells as we counted the evening out,
gestured towards the cars, deciding who would go with who

and gradually splitting off, under the planes with the squirrel dreys
hidden in all that ivy, but hanging low directly above the station,

there, where we looked pointing, like an Oriental illustration
of Arabian Nights, lay the old moon in the new moon's arms:

earthshine on the moon's night side, on the moon's dark limb,
earthlight, our light, our gift to the moon reflected back to us

and the duty we owe our elders as the Romans owed their Gods
— duties they called pietàs, we call pity — shone in the moon's pietà.
...

Every day the world is beloved by me, the seagull eager
for its perch. I woke this morning to a darkened room,

my soul stabled at the gate. We grow older, quieter,
hearing degrees of movement, distance, and the dead

would listen if they could to the voices of the living
as bedrock listens to the ocean. I listen to the waves,

trying to make them go one, two, one, two, to hear
what Virginia Woolf heard. But she heard it in memory,

darling memory that delineates. One, two, one, two,
and all the variable intervals in between surrendering

to ‘the very integer' Alice Oswald rhymed with water,
creating a thumb hole through which to see the world.

Light fluctuates and my soul fluctuates like a jellyfish
underwater. My hand throws animal shadows on paper

and there, outlined, is a single goat, black and white,
standing on top of the mountain, like a tiny church.
...

I can hear myself moving around
in the dark. My footsteps
lagging up the stairs. Now
I am quiet, listening to the light
that strikes the plant in
leaves of light at the turn.

An animal in the brush, large
enough to encompass a shuffle
here, a footfall there. Ooh.
I am lovely in my sounds.
I am moonlight and darkness,
death and habitation.

I thrill to the sounds my memory hears.
Sounds I have made in my life
through all my life - a child's hand reaching
for water, chink of the glass
replaced. They moon about
the house, free to help themselves.

They do. How bright it is
in the fridge! You can hardly
bear such brightness. But where am I
between this soft thud
and the next? I am in all rooms,
on all stairs, lumbering and animal,

enough to make you worry
when a door clicks and I, on this side
or on that, forget myself. Hear that?
What? Nothing, I hear nothing.
Only the pillow crackling,
a rasp, a whistle of breath.
...

Seldom do we Andalusians notice the ‘middle tone'.
An Andalusian either shouts at the stars or
kisses the red dust of the road. The middle tone
does not exist for him; he sleeps right through it.
Federico García Lorca
Just so I spend my life asleep.
Stars, if there are, might shine above
And dust, dust that I've always loved's
Now dirt at most I lightly sweep.

But cantaor, I too exist.
My middle tone of dung and nectar,
flower and carrion, is a star
that fell, dust I too once kissed.



Reproduced by kind permission of the author and Carcanet.
...

Suppose I emptied my flat of everything,
everything but my books? The elephants
would have to go. They'd be the first to go
- being the youngest - and the last, the plants
perhaps, relics of early motherhood.
I'd keep the piano, all my files and photos.

I'd keep my grandmother's chest to keep my photos
in, in and not on top of, everything
swept absolutely clear of motherhood.
Nothing shall move: no herd of elephants
proceed down my mantel-piece, spider-plants
produce babies, carpets moths, moths shall go

into the ether where all bad spells go.
I'm sick of the good. Of drooling over photos
that lie, lie, lie, breaking my back over plants
for whom - Oh! for whom? Not everything
I thought green greened. Not even elephants
consoled me for the bane of motherhood.

Therefore motherhood must go. Motherhood
must go as quietly as prisoners go
and all her things go with her, elephants
troop behind her, tapestries drown her, photos -
OK photos can stay but everything
dust-collecting goes the way of the plants.

Everything shall live in name only. Plants
now extinct shall be extolled, motherhood
shall be blessed but not mothers, everything
everywhere being their fault though they go
to the dock protesting, producing photos
of happy toddlers, citing elephants,

rashly, as preceptors since elephants,
however vicious they may be to plants
or photographers with blinding flash photos,
are the very model of motherhood.
Such are the myths of nature. They shall go.
There shall be room, time, space, for everything:

room in the wild for elephants and plants,
time to go rummaging a chest for photos,
space for everything cleared of motherhood.



Reproduced by kind permission of the author and Carcanet.
...

When you wake to jitters every day, it's heartache.
Ignore it, explore it, either way it's heartache.

Youth's a map you can never refold,
from Yokohama to Hudson Bay, it's heartache.

Follow the piper, lost on the road,
whistle the tune that led him astray: it's heartache.

Stop at the roadside, name each flower,
the loveliness that will always stay: it's heartache.

Why do nightingales sing in the dark?
Ask the radif, it will only say ‘it's heartache'.

Let khalvati, ‘a quiet retreat',
close my ghazal and heal as it may its heartache.
...