slant hand of beech leaves
shag of oaks before water
When did you go missing from me?
That passage between limb and slipped skin
gouged hickories, the ermine-bright birch
through all that is traveling slopeward
circleting leaf through branch weave
corymbs of curled leaves
lone cedar document rising
Through trees that far land moves descant
the old rusts and pastes undershined
Don’t you ever think this is so strange?
the sibilant drift of dried leaves
the coming down all to some shambles
the encroachments on the innermost things
Don’t you feel how everything is strained beyond
certain remembering?
The limbs break their fragile whisks into
The sky is a shroud pulled up over
Each leaf of the beech has its wisdom held fast
its little death ship
I cannot wake up from inside
this burrow into fundaments of leaves
The cold drills down into the stone
the almost-extracted green
the bird cloaked up under the ribs
the dull gleams
tazmin
ġham tumhārā thā zindagī goyā tum ko khoyā use nahīñ khoyā fart-e-girya se jī na halkā ho bas yahī soch kar nahīñ royā ashk to ashk haiñ sharāb se bhī maiñ ne ye dāġh-e-dil nahīñ dhoyā maiñ vo kisht-e-nashāt kyoñ kāTūñ jis ko maiñ ne kabhī nahīñ boyā aabla aabla thī jaañ phir bhī bār-e-hastī
