There’s a snowstorm that appears
in the pauses when an orderly screen
of jewelley squares, mind-temptations
falls blank as though thinking
a shower of sparks that tumbles
the way this screen tumbled
from my hands to hit a Tehran pavement
as my excitement at the sight of an
old-style bakery–its heap of tiny pebbles
just visible through an arched eye,
golden in the flames
streaks of dough sliding gradually down
like hot ice floes–
fuelled my eagerness to capture it
grab a slice to serve back home at
tea parties
the triumphant traveller
returning with pockets stuffed with
nougat and Persian candy floss and
musings on this new foreignness (being
a foreigner everywhere myself)
but here the glass shattered
and the voyage out of the heart’s homeland
into the planes of mind and possession
is now scarred with an exquisite
flurry of cracks
a weeping willow
Japanese etched wave
interrupting the illusion
so I have to read around it
even though the glass is temporarily
held together with sticky tape
the destruction is not undone, only
left hanging in a perpetual crash
delighting in breaking up the sleekness
of my gadget like a Greek wedding guest
Oh the joy of smashing!
Of tearing at the cardboard box we call
normality
and shredding it to papery flakes!
throwing knick-knacks to the rocks
not fearing their demise
but glorying in the glory
drifting through the drifts
as liquid as a seaward current
as light as a seeker’s last breath
and as golden as the inner glow
that no screen could ever frame!
