Eileen from Longsight or Short

Eileen at Hotel Forte long before the minimum wage
Working away in nineteen springs’ wide clothing of
Blank in white shirt and wore on a light-strung smile
From Longsight or Short of Manchester knew I not

I met her at the tired diner serving me with inedible
Lamb Rogan Josh kind she was and spoke like a lily
Softly making me sad for she was striped off her self
Even before she was even before she saw the mirror

Eileen told me she had never left Manchester and
That she never probably would nor she wanted to
For life was like that where nothing ever happened
All was cheap-labours hard-pulls and pay-the-bills

But still she spoke to me with inquisitive an angle
She asked me as to how London looked and how
It felt living in there and whether weather of things
Were expensive or how life’s derivation must play

Years later I still remember Eileen who served me
And spoke to me with such a beauty in her soul
That I still feel sad thinking she would never have
Known that she ought to locate a mirror and see

What they had striped off her and that what was
Hers was still there remaining like the unused path
Hidden beneath the grass and all she needed to do
Was to rip the grass off to sing out the Eileen-path

I was sad though I hoped one day Eileen would rise
To seek her features sparks and posts and write out
All in the soft alphabet of her voice and say Longsight
Here I go to grab the world far away from Hotel Forte

Eileen may rise long away from Longsight or short
One day Eileen may spell the end of waging on and
Spell the end of minimum and maximum wage and
Stamp the air with her smile and soft voice singing

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Deelara My Niece

Deelara my niece a face made of only words
Her truth only crafted of imagination’s earth
Only words alone opened misty planes of her
Beyond reach world full of mountains clouds
And green in Assam somewhere in India she
Was rising her truth only come alive in words

Deelara whose name bore ‘two hearts’ or ‘more
Than one of them’ or ‘full of them’ or simply it
Said ‘more love’ or literally spelt ‘heart and’ and
Made feminine as the Rastas say: ‘I and’ and she
Was Deelara full of heart surely more than one
Growing in Assam in India’s greenscape Devon

My niece born in India whose existence was only
Words of letters and of people telling us about her
I a few years older a lone Celt found my pebbles
And played in the bamboo plane under open sky
The swaying shadows and spreading wind-sonatas
Spoke worlds that opened only in silence of words

I did not see her nor did she I but we grew apart
Loving for she was the first baby in our family’s
Big-people-landscape where I was a monarch of
Solitude of the air and the grass and the skies and
I played making things alive and bringing things
To life in words quiet solitude sung imagination

And same Deelara did of her uncle of imagination
From words of letters and of people of imagination
And soon she became Deela and still unseen apart
I grew older and became father’s unpaid note taker
I wrote letters to my brother and those words was
All they had of us and we had of them: only words

And when she came who cared about the Politics
Or Anthropology of diversion or derivatives of
People for her mother born of a Sylheti man and
An Assamese mother and now she was my niece
Deelara came home wearing words to life and a
Smile opened as the shine on a tea leaf in the sun

And she spoke as though my mother was reborn
In her and I called her maa and loved her as such
Deelara always knew how to tell me off smiling
She would scold you off with disarming a smile
A smile that makes a tailor-bird nest in your heart
Deela still speaks in the voice of my mother smiling

And yet now far we are away and apart back to old
Days geography separates us in the logic of times
But the voice in that little girl with a big smile and
A double double heart telling me off now a mother
A grandmother herself I wonder how she would
Tell me off as to the mess I have made of this life
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Mubin My Nephew

That’s the day in April when the world was worlds
Of fire-fly-photons gone mad from a sun singing in
The exuberant space over The River flowing silently
The first day of college a Universe-bud-life waiting

That was the day he decided to open up the cocoon
And flew out a butterfly cry stopping me going out
My nephew they named Mubin was born in April
Nineteen eighty two a year where I rose to sing out

I was late and I missed my first class of the first day
Of college thanks to Mubin who now a young man
Turned out to be an artist and a poet stole my first
Class making me reach first Chemistry’s alphabet

And he grew to be a baby as if he was born of me
Stuck with me always and still he is like that a mad
Boy mad about his uncle o how I remember the day
He cried out the Universe-bud-life waiting for us

For him and for me and there he was Mubin rising
To open his space to elaborate his bubble and his
Smile that pulsates a flowing fluidity of innocence
Like the current of The River that flew on silently

How would one know where to begin and where
To look for the song that only sings wider a scale
A beyond reach spread how would you know how
To read a book that you have not yet seen or heard

But life is what Mubin was a cry of beginning to rise
A flowing magnetism to fathom the flow of The River
And what it carries when the moon comes to drink her
Mubin my nephew still smiles The River beautifully
 

But a sense of expected disappointment remains
Lingering the abandonment that spreads heavily
Gradually lifting light ornaments: some sort of joys

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day lived in howling nights of people’s
Gifts of offerings ample pains amply elaborated
On cruelty’s butter she faced from the bigots and
The bull-headed ones bent in silent raw contempt

Dorothy Day a black rose in the sun-marked hours
When she smiled and I met her on a May day pains
On my face she was on her chores cleaning the path
Around her flat and where no one ever talked to her

For they spread her character in poison-whispers
That she had hidden darkness which were smelly
And knife-like they wanted her out those her white
Neighbours who found all sort of spots dark alien

So lonely she was and under seize strapped under
The marquee of the made up map of what those
Whispers painted of her of Dorothy Day who was
As clean as the cross in Salisbury Cathedral’s reach

She had been a nurse all her life now retired old
Fit and clean she was and tidy as a sun-wet spring
Leaf her garden looked as a shining Dorset Green
The path was as happy as her palms soft but thin

Dorothy’s children lived like God’s spread over
The world for they were in America and Canada
And here and there they were but Dorothy Day
Smiled on braving the seize of bent-neighbours

Neighbours who refused to hear out Jesus or
Rather took his literal opposite and thus they
Lodged a complaint against ninety five year
Old Dorothy Day being anti social busybody

I never heard Dorothy fight I never saw her
Spelling troubles and no one ever spoke to
Dorothy Day whose name I did not even
Know till I walked up to her to say hello

On a Dorothy Day day and said hello with
A handshake and in turn of my good day
Dorothy spread an invisible shawl in her
Smile that raised me to the ground of silk

But the council officer investigating came
To investigate so to assert the rights of the
Neighbours and she was rather upset that
She met me who painted Dorothy Day on

A Picasso canvas where I found her but she
Found all that hard to write for she came to
Just agree on with the neighbours that that
Dorothy Day was a dark pain and must go

Go but I put up a stop sign sending her back
Thus Dorothy Day going through May day
Pains survived the onslaught of the screws
And still smiled on as a black rose rising on

Dorothy Day could live in here or there but
You do not notice her but she lives here and
She lives there and she only waits for you to
Stop to say good day and see how she forms

An invisibly tangible heaven on floating air
And let you walk on it beautifully that you
Now lack both weight and mass for she will
Tell you stories of humanity of yours of hers

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Debt of a Letter

( For the memories of my Late Eldest Brother Syed Moneer Ahmed)


Between us death and pneumonia-silence
Between us a debt of a letter of heart only
Between life and I Typhoid now raging on
A Mynah Bird crying out its soul calling out
Calling his name a yellow-black aria of loss
My Brother a teacher a legend of a man gone

I did not go to school
I won’t go to school
I stayed home silent
I couldn’t write it
That letter that one
Needed to write heart
And debt richness without
Money and wise wisdom
I decided no school for me

A little boy in a world too big but beautifully
A violin being played by a yellow-fire yellow
Bird on the shining canopy of green trees on
Heat of an exuberant sun in wind waving on
My Brother was the big child to play with me
He called and asked: Why are all these clouds

I elaborated my clouds and he
Listened and said: That is a serious
Matter indeed that we must seek
To solve and get the clouds out of
Our way to spell the sun back
He sat me on his lap and held my
Hand and helped my write it
That letter of the heart and sent me
Back to school never to go back home

Now I am in debt of the heart I carry this debt of
A letter of the heart that he left with me a heavy
Debt that made me rich without money wise as
The sky he was I carry his spread spelling the love
Of his Mayna Bird that died calling his name name
Between us life sings as a debt of a letter of heart

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The Long Walk Home

To bring rice to Bangladesh where people dream
Pearl-dream-rice rice-dream-pearls and smile like
Paddy plants swaying in the wind a green Sibelius

From Tokyo where people open and close like rice
Pearls white pearls white abounding pearls waves
It’s like taking snow up to Finland from Kashmir

The world is one in only a pearl-snow-smile only if
You rise to let the sky sink in the white soul of snow
A deep kiss of blue spreading like happiness-blood

But there I was at the Dhaka G.P.O young at heart as
Ever looking and there was the long brown tube with
A Japanese name the Ambassador of Japan it was sent

Someone informed me and said that contained pearls
Of Japan rice from Japan for the Ambassador and he
Was speechless in praise of his patriotism so well sung

I stood there lost looking at that long brown tube mute
Holding rice from Japan for the man who was patriotic
Only than I realised going home was to be a long walk

A long long walk home from a long brown tube silent
And knitting away something beyond word that kept
Telling me a walk home to Earth-pearl-rice was to be
A long walk from Dhaka from Tokyo from Kashmir
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