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Call it coincidence, fate, or mere chance.
A happy turn of the dice, mere chance.
The odds are low you'll win the lotto
But why not throw your lot in — dare chance?
The path of a fairy tale, lined with minute clues;
Uncovered by a clever prince, not pure chance.
To sit under the tree with Isaac Newton
When the apple fell, insight ensnared chance.
A mistake led to islands of fine mold,
Fleming seized the yellow fruit of sheer chance!
Bad luck, good luck, in the end we help fate.
Error led Columbus' boats to steer chance.
Of existence will we solve the puzzles?
From stars wrought. An alchemy of rare chance.
The explorer may find diamonds or deceit.
Some eaten by creek crocs, caught by drear chance.
Take the Frost foot-path, clear of all footprints.
You may find unknown treasures of dear chance.
Risk the soft sanctum of your inner soul.
Susan left home so she could bestir chance.
"Here, the language of stones surpasses the language of men"
— Rabindranath Tagore.
(Konark and Hampi, India, January 2009)
The image you've made is not in the stone, but the tool.
Break these stones, and you will find only more stones.
The green fur of rice fields, frangipani pushing through
cracks in the granite — this constant haggling with stones.
What is this surging, this pressure, these underskin currents?
I rest at the bleached summit — how to reach the deep of stones?
Pounded and cracked, clothed with the language of men —
the slow, untranslatable breath of the earth — these stones.
At moments, we become the ghosts we deny, then flesh again.
Behind the rainbow gauntlet of shops, the silence of stones.
How is a god born? Fed with the deaths of flowers and fruit,
smeared with offerings, ignored by the turned backs of stones.
I turn a shirt-button in my fingers like a problem, hearing
the think, think, think of clothes cleaned against stones.
At dawn, I wake damp from another dream. She's gone.
In the corners of my eyes and heart, these tiny hard stones.
Plastic wrappers, prayers and shit floating in the holy river.
Water, in time, wears down the certainty even of stones.
Great-grandmother Ardi, Lucy's grandmother and mine, in my bedtime story
I smile at the number of greats I must add before I address you, mother,
as I wait for sleep to come and think, four million years, how long is our family story.
You four feet and me five-six; not so much, Ardi, in high heels you'd pass
and I could scrunch down; people would say, I see the family resemblance.
We'd look at each other and smile as the media publicized our human story.
If you came to visit me, Ardi, not knowing your likes, I'd lay out a nice buffet.
No meat (I'm sure you're a veggie like me) so onion-sweet potato casserole,
pears baked in honey and a crispy apple tart would be a pleasantly remembered story.
Watching my children on the jungle gym, you'd remember when your own granny
told of swinging through the trees, a talent lost when the younger generation
decided it was better to walk, lost their airy grace and no longer dared any upper story.
Now would you dress up or would I dress down? I'd let you wear my pretty dress,
then we'd get naked in the hot tub. You'd probably smile kindly at my smooth body,
tell me I was pretty and then take it home to tell your buds — this funny hairless story.
The apostolic succession is nothing compared to us, Ardi. Laying on hands, we did it
before we came down from the trees, and when the bishops strut around
in their pretty frocks, we'll smile our secret smiles and know we've got a better story.
ontologically i've outlined myself
cogito ergo sum i've divined myself
neither ruby emerald gold nor pearl
i hope i have not undermined myself
i couldn't find a god worthy of worship
so i built my own shrine enshrined myself
dear arch nemesis don't die for i have
in relation to you defined myself
will you ever hear her say to you
raza for you i have pined myself
At least, for the sake of hurting I beg you to come to me
Long before the saddest parting I beg you to come to me
I am not demanding you to bestow me treasure of love
Once for the sake of acting I beg you to come to me —
If you think your love for me can be expressed by hiding it
Long before you hid that feeling I beg you to come to me
It is my sinister luck that I don't make a proper match
For you are extremely charming I beg you to come to me
With your all lame excuses don't make Archi's life a hell
One day, for never returning I beg you to come to me
As sand sucks up the advancing tide or a statue of Ganesh draws in spoons of sugar,
don't spend your life working for Godivas; be content with the simple pleasure of sugar.
As sauce falls on ice cream like Gaudi dreams or Buddha's nectar falls on grass like manna,
love God and your neighbor — warm love will fall on you like caramelized puddles of sugar.
As farms yield up topsoil to the river or morning liquor spreads freely through your veins,
give your blood to others, knowing it is filled with rich nourishment from spoons of sugar.
As New Testament sweetness lurks in fiery southern baptisteries or ice glazes early blossoms,
in honeysuckle find not only fragrance but energy, each flower with its hidden drop of sugar.
As oil anoints bodies awaiting prophecy or concert notes arch in air to fall in our ears and hearts,
soothe love and lotion over age-gnarled bodies, then offer the comfort of hot tea with lots of sugar.
As ideas re-mix to make new books or crushed fruit soaks cloth and drips into the waiting bowl,
winesap amber, concord purple, gooseberry green are summer sun preserved in jars of sugar.
As sap is plundered from the hijacked maple tree or currency flows from poor into rich pockets;
after cane becomes rum, don't begrudge angels their inhaled portion of the transformed grains of sugar.
Even chance events have causes, occluded as those causes may be. Our responses shiver between law and chance, randomness and determination. The resistance, the opacity, of stone makes it the natural image of the hardness of the physical world. We can shape stone, certainly, but the shapes are the result of the tools we use, not of, contrary to long-standing sculptural cliché, "revealing the form hidden in the stone." We cut away stone and reveal — gods, creatures, the furniture of the world, and, finally, ourselves.
We can, of course, take a chance, and converse with our most-remote ancestor. The unshaped stuff of the world (Greek, hyle, "wood" or "matter") — the substance of things resists us as it reveals us. Conversation, dialog, open us to each other. We define ourselves in relation to the Other, ancestor, enemy, lover. The Other does share with stone the qualities of opacity and resistance, reducing us to pleading — or poetry.
Begin with chance and stone, and end with sugar. Rather than hard stone, existence is a flow of sweetness, a capture, release, exchange of sweetness. Hyle: not wood but sugar, not inert stuff but process, change, exchange. These ghazals are richer than these comments. Read and reread them: they may be stones with which you wrestle or sugar which you savor. Whichever, the reward is yours.