LUPUS IN FLIGHT

HANSEL ON A LEAD

2025-12-05T01:36:00.006+00:00

My uncle with Hansel

Couldn't find a picture with Hansel at their feet, but he was there!

Papa,

everyone you love will be there.

I tell you this, not because I want

to comfort you, but because I know

it is true. I felt them;

they were waiting, excitedly,

embodying patience

and the immediacy of joy.

I am theirs as much as I am yours -

and surely, because you have lived

twice as long as I,

the abundance of those awaiting you

will far exceed mine.

Papa,

everyone who loves you will be there.

You don’t believe me?

Ok, let’s try it this way - remember

when Hansel sat between you and Ma

on your wedding day?

A dog is a blessing, a dog can be a guide

even in the afterlife.

Imagine, then, Hansel awaiting you

at the gates. Imagine Nina Simone

singing I wish I knew how it would

feel to be free - to you, Pops,

except she would stop halfway through,

because you wouldn't have to imagine it

any more.

Shaista, 2025

My grandmother holding Dad's face - she adored and respected him.

Lovebugs

My mother is always beautiful - and most radiant on this day of all days

Shaista, 2025

It's Open Link night over at DVerse, and sometimes a prompt is necessary for a tired poet... it seems all I can manage to be jogged into doing a thing, and even then, just about. The prompt was on abundance - meaning food - but love is an abundance of food, of sorts. I wrote this poem for Dad during a poetry workshop knowing he'd been feeling a bit low that day, knowing I would see him immediately afterwards and I could tell him to try not to hate the thought of leaving, of saying goodbye, because everyone who loves him will welcome him to the other side. But of course, that's not fully true is it? Because the ones who are on this side love him even more fiercely than anyone anywhere in any dimension. Most especially the radiant wife he managed to snag for himself a few glorious decades ago. They made beautiful memories on that day, which have lasted a lifetime. It's a tricky business, this loving and being loved... He's ok, for now. It's his mind that makes it a dance with the devil. Long hours in the particular darkness only the blind inhabit. His greatest desperation is finding the next audiobook - any good recommendations to keep his mind occupied?! An abundance of audiobooks - stories galore - that would be the dream abundance for Dad...

YA HADI

2025-11-21T01:28:00.006+00:00

You are there, somewhere,

someone to someone else.

We saw fireworks, together on the roof,

and though the moon stayed hidden

for a while, she peeped out later,

to join the carpet of stars;

And I, beneath them, and yet above

my curious skin, wishing for a guide, for us, for him -

Ya Hadi! Oh God, I beseech.

What does your God say? he asks me.

I am not lost to myself, even if

I am lost to you. I was looking for you,

but you were long gone, caught

in another’s light. I, alone in the dark,

wait to be found again. Meanwhile,

I hold my own lantern

down these treacherous stairs.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2025 (a translation of Ya Hadi, if needed, is The Guide… one of Allah’s 99 attributes)

With thanks to Sanaa Rizvi for calling me back in to share a poem on Open Link Night at DVerse Poets… it has been a few months since I last posted… and Edna St Vincent Millay’s poem ‘Love is not all (Sonnet XXX)’ was too tempting a prompt. Dangerous to share Millay in full - to expose my poor poet self against her masterful skill - but I can’t not share. What a sonnet.

‘Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.’

UNORIGINAL

2025-08-29T03:41:00.003+01:00

I think it’s okay,

more and more,

this being unoriginal.

I like it.

A reclaiming of an older animal,

the lion that didn’t mind

sharing the shade of the tree,

the wolf whose grey fur melded

into moon, and shades of sky.

I’m okay wearing the skin

of what has been before,

and what has yet to come

in other forms,

more renegade than mine.

Even riot and rebellion is ancient.

Even breaking, even healing.

For our Thursday night open link session at DVerse …

Image of Sekhmet via sacredegypt.com

NINETY YEARS OF LOVE

2025-08-17T12:25:00.001+01:00

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms, And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail, Unwillingly to school...

I am sitting in the conservatory, Bella beside me on her iPad, the two of us knuckling down to a little late afternoon writing... a remembering of our summer thus far. Bella is mostly mewing beside me while I try to tempt her to various strands of 'where to start a piece' about her recent five days at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. A pigeon is casually clip-clopping on the roof above our heads, a metronomic timer accompanying us as we touch type. Downstairs, three generations of Tayabali men are watching/ listening to the cricket... the tussle between India and England has been on usual historically tense display. Perveen is in her computer corner, working on her third novel, A Sparrow Sings. Her first two novels are still filling her readers from Bombay to Singapore to Canada with nostalgic joy.

This afternoon, Raf broke a double yolked egg into his noodles. 'Go show Grandma,' I said, knowing double yolks are meaningful to Mum - she broke a double yolk on the morning of her wedding day. And on rare occasions since, always infusing the moment and the day with a touch of ceremonial blessing. Summer in England for the Singapore crew will come to an end in a week's time. The children will go back to school and I will approach another birthday with a mixture of gratitude and bafflement. How do the years coalesce into decades, how are we living the seven ages of man we merely studied, unromantically, at school? Language that was beyond normal comprehension then, and frankly, now.

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide/ For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes/ And whistles in his sound.

This summer, my father turned ninety. Ninety years. Is that included in the seven ages?

Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

No... Shakespeare does not convey a lifetime of love, admiration and the youthful spark that still lights my father's spirit, humour and wisdom. Perhaps Shakespeare never met such a person as Dr. Chotu Tayabali? What is the worth and weight of a life? Can poetry contain the essence of the human experience? I have been attending poetry workshops since last autumn with the dancer-poet Trivarna Hariharan... each poem I wrote was filled with grief and mourning. So I stopped. In summer and in winter, I am a full time aunt, and find myself unable to concentrate on much other than planning days, moments, activities and meals to make time pass bearably, enjoyably, for children away from their usual landscape of security.

We painted a fence in candy stripe colours of cream and pink. We drew fish and Pokemon. We watched Fantastic Four at a fancy cinema and in between, wove tales for Chotu of life continued, generations continued. My father always wanted children around him; I have inherited this thread of understanding too. Where there are birds, there is hope and song. So also where there are children, Happy birthday to the original Pied Piper, from the adoring, uncountable, leaves of his tree.

A THOUSAND FLUTES

2025-06-06T01:15:00.002+01:00

There are trees everywhere, on my shelves.

You could call them books, or leaves.

Ada Limón says, ‘It begins with trees’

and although some might argue that

‘it begins with water’, with the first separation

into ‘the waters above and the waters below’

maybe we, in our separation, begin

our ways of seeing with trees.

For example, we never remember

that we are mostly water.

We always forget to drink

in the casual days of abundance -

only when we are parched in the desert,

forced into famine, or praying at Ramadan,

do we remember the sweet

source of our beginnings.

We cut the willow down

because she was rooting

into the walls of our house,

seeking the river.

I think of this most days.

It was an us and her moment

we never foresaw -

not my tree loving mother, nor me.

My mother adapts. She sees

the holly that was hidden

behind the willow

flourishing, freely, now.

I’m still in nostalgic mourning.

The willow was a thousand flutes

singing all day long, like Radha

dancing to Krishna.

Pigeons and doves made love in the

shifting light of a green curtain.

Everything was music and dance

almost all year long.

It’s still now, empty.

My grandmother would have hated it;

Vera loved the willow

as much, or more.

I liked hiding inside her.

She was not just tree,

she was water too.

But being water was her undoing.

She was planted outside a house,

on a human road, between grass and car.

Perhaps her death began

at the moment of her birth?

Did trees begin with us?

No, they began with the sea.

Oh, why do we end tree stories?

Do we?

My shelves are filled with leaves,

and the willow lives inside me.

The kissing and the killing

forever entwined within me.

© Shaista Tayabali, 2025

Photos by me, in Emmanuel College, Cambridge - post infusion

Art of Radha Krishna by @abhiart (Abhishek Singh)

Poem included on Dverse Poets Open Link night, a community who have been sharing poetry as long as I have had my blog...

A LITTLE WISTERIA

2025-05-03T21:19:00.001+01:00

In a quiet Cambridge front porch, the scent of a small vine satisfies.

I stepped outside yesterday and buried my nose in the lower hanging wisteria. I let the plump petals bless my forehead, cheeks and just for a moment, thought this, this is what we dream of when times are hard, when beauty is a luxury that almost makes us angry - because others can enjoy what is not ours. When hunger is at the forefront, and food is scarce for us, but others are eating plentifully, voraciously, and also therefore, carelessly, how can we write poetry that is not tinged with steel and scalpel?

A blackbird is hunting around the daisy adorned grass in front of me. I am standing in the doorway, listening to a chorus of birdsong, knowing that the church bells will ring in less than an hour. It is Friday evening, May has begun and the wider world is roiling away with war, extraction and poverty.

Tomorrow, when the nurse places a needle in some part of my arm, I will as always think of other humans in less salubrious medical conditions. I will give thanks simultaneously with my silent ‘ouch’ if the needle finds a dry spot, a scarred tissue, a little vein of sorrowful memory.

“Shaista, there’s a book I think I’d like to re-read,’ says Dad. Saint Francis of Assisi. By Chesterton. Take a look?’

‘I’m on it,’ I say.

And today, it arrives by the magic of mail.

Scraps of happiness, windows of light, the pattern reveals itself oh so slowly. Mostly we are myopic beings, causing our worst damage when we see but darkly.

Yitzchak has just been born to Sarah and Abraham in the Old Testament class I attend once a week. ‘He will laugh.’ And soon after, Sarah commands Hagar to flee with Ishmael, to become strangers in a wilderness. I find myself thinking of Zarathustra, the prophet who was born laughing. Lately, I’m trying to understand laughing till we cry and crying turning to laughter. And between them, and around them, the still moving waters of the deep.

SUMUD صمود

2025-04-19T17:53:00.000+01:00

April now… we are in the middle of Passover. Chag Sameach. For some, this is the second Seder without their family members, who were taken hostage during the autumn of 2023. I think about how part of the world is praying everyday for the removal of some people from Gaza for their safety, while others are praying for the continued resistance of Palestinians, to be able to stay in their land, on their land. This particular resistance is known as

صمود

To quote Rabbi Brant Bosen, ‘Those who participate in the Passover Seder are required not only to read the story of the Exodus, but to examine its relevance as the Haggadah instructs us, in every generation.’ Adam from Adama… human from humus… from the soil we arise with soul, and then we are returned to ash and dust, soul returning to… where? I see the atheist’s point of view. If this is all a game, a playful experiment, with God the creator and destroyer, equally, then why engage in a game rigged from the very beginning?

This year finds me drifting in a conscious, thoughtful way, between the Hebrew (new to me) and Arabic letters. Shin, Alif, Lam/Lamed and Meem/Mem…next time, some more letters from Dad’s name… known lovingly as Chotu, he is also of course Mujtaba Tayabali. Tayyib, meaning good… around the Middle East, it’s almost slang for ‘What’s good? All good? All well? Bien? Bené?’ Or more politely, ‘Keef halak, ya tayyib? How are you, O good one?’

Well, it’s not at all tayyib. It’s so far from tayyib. We are all holding on to the scraps of our minds. Scattered Minds is the title of one of Gabor Maté’s earliest books, on ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder - I feel very ADD with the amount of literature I feel I ought to be ‘on top of’, the podcast episodes I have not yet caught up on, even, for the sake of entertainment, the TV dramas and movies I have yet to watch, the music that is passing me by.

Chat GPT helpfully sorts out a version of my life: this is how your life could look, appear the magically typed out words. I pay attention to the orderly structure for a moment, and then I scatter. Meanwhile, in between reading the cricket commentary to Dad, feeding my parents dishes I cook from Hello Fresh recipes, and trying to remember to do at least two surya namaskars a day, I am painting by numbers. Each month, I manage one completed work. Here is April slowly unfolding, one tiny shape at a time…

HAFTSEEN

2025-03-21T19:12:00.002+00:00

It’s Navroze today, the 21st of March. Spring equinox. That daffodil time of year. A good Iranian creates a beautiful haft-seen table, as described in this article perfectly. ‘Haft’ is seven in Persian, and the seven objects to be displayed all begin with the Persian letter ‘seen’ … S.

It’s not a big Parsi thing as far as I recall? And not a practise we have ever engaged in as a family, but it does look delightful when done… as would any feast table at iftar, Eid, Diwali, Passover and Christmas… beginnings, middles, ends of years. The seasons are scuttling by faster than ever, humans are humaning so fast that we have already ushered in the dawn of our intelligence companion - dear old Chat GPT, invisible amanuensis, ever ready with a thoughtful answer, memory ever updating. Feeding us and fed by us. An Additional Intelligence.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been attending poetry workshops once a week… in January, I began attending a God Fellowship course in tandem with studying the Hebrew Bible with Hadar Cohen, a mystic Arab Jewish scholar, who possesses that rare ability to invite deep spiritual and spirited thought by the quality of her listening. In Hadar’s case, the peace she creates is secondary to the justice and universal liberation she works for.

Listening is an art we aren’t encouraged to practise. It’s the talkies we like to engage in. Chatters by nature, our opinions have become currency. The radio has been replaced by podcasts and Instagram can be dipped into all day long. I love podcasts. I think I’m subscribed to over one hundred and sixty! I have uncounted tabs open on my various devices, an enormous list of movies/ documentaries to be watched and partially read books glower at me, reproaching their once loyal, now absentee friend.

I like to think I will make a longed for return to reading. I like to think I will attend to my patiently waiting novel. My yoga mats stretch out, hopeful in purple and pink… but… early this morning, a song rang out loud and conspicuous - ‘Pretend you’re happy when you’re blue!’ - and I knew Dad had not slept, was desperate for a cup of tea and company. The sun caught him out the other day, as he soaked up rays in the doorway. He fainted and Mum had a tricky time trying to manage him back to bed, and then, when he still hadn't fully regained consciousness, down to the floor - I was at the hospital having an infusion. The paramedics arrived and were brilliant, but Mum had already wrenched her back by then. Dad’s ok, Mum’s ok … Nat King Cole sets the tone… and I, trying not to cry most of the time, keep quilting the patchwork of my days, a haft seen of its own.

(Images of the Haftseen above are by Pauline Eleazar for Savoir Flair)

(Hadar Cohen can be found at her own website and at Malchut, her Jewish Mystical School)

EVEN MALEFICENT

2025-01-31T01:28:00.005+00:00

I hold my face in my two hands,
and the rest of me falls apart.

So I hold my feet in my two hands,

and now I am on the floor.

Oh not this again,

me longing to fly.

Searching for wings,

I find torn flesh,

this too, ripped,

by two hands.

Nameless men, named men.

Even Maleficent

took lifetimes of loneliness,

to find her wings again.

at DVerse Poets

image from Allure magazine

ICARUS IN REVERSE

2025-01-17T06:40:00.002+00:00

I want to be impressive

and say I met a mountain once,

or a pyramid, or the desert -

but the truth is the sea scares me

and the only landscape I know

lies beneath me;

my bed. My panicked heart.

I iron over my panicked heart,

flat as sheets of hair

you can buy these days, and

attach, like a doll’s accessory

to your own bemused scalp -

whose stories have crossed rivers

you’ll never know.

Be sure there was sadness there,

you’ll never know.

No one parts with their hair

when it ripples freely; freedom

was paid in the sacrifice. Who

pockets the coins of gold

in the temples of our prayers?

The first women who wrote poetry

were nuns, some say. But the

first woman was earth, was sea,

was fire flooding air, is still

every tree. I want to be impressive?

Why? Every tiny seed is me.

The sorrow is I forget my wings

and falling, fail to rescue me.

(Images: via Lucy Campbell art on instagram After Bruegel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels)

Participating in DVerse Poets Open Link night

PALINODE TO FLIGHT

2025-01-10T22:38:00.002+00:00

‘New Year met me somewhat sad,

Old year leaves me tired’ - Christina Rossetti

Bird on a wire.

Bird on a tree.

I see you.

Do you see me?

Blink and I’ll miss you.

Squint and you’ll see me.

I, in a taxi, unable to drive.

You, wingèd beastie, fly.

Fly!

Down among the chimneys,

we burn and kill each other.

Friendly slaughterhouse,

we marry and charm each other.

Trees grow down here, their

roots our only saving grace.

Mycelium drip feeds our lungs -

we live, we breathe; sip by sip,

we make space.

This, an attempt at a palinode (a song of opposite ideas, or retraction of opinions) is what I wrote in the taxi on the way to the hospital yesterday for an infusion I missed on Sunday. I slept through Sunday’s infusion appointment time, still so fatigued from the weight of last year.

In this poem, I begin with height and flight, but also shorter staccato lines, and then it takes a turn, a descent, a swoop down into the mire and murk of being human. I try towards the end to invite the idea of space, which is what birds have in abundance, and what we seem to devour with our selves, our industry and our tech. Trees, as always, save us, both reaching down and reaching up. Trees have no need for palinodes. Except when they are on fire…

(Images : Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882)

DVerse Poets

TONGLEN AND YUTORI

2024-12-31T21:27:00.001+00:00

Have you heard of the Buddhist practise called Tonglen? It's a bodhicitta meditation of taking in dark energy, difficulty or despair and breathing out light, radiating beauty. No simple task! The likes of Zen master Pema Chodron are surely better able to know the size and depth of the darkness your own particular heart can hold before attempting alchemy. But I also think this is a practise most of us do every day in some small way.

It has been a tiring year. It is now three months since Dad went into hospital with sepsis and ear infections that made his life just that bit more challenging. I mean terrifying and confusing. And, in his typical fashion, though terror and confusion, still gracious, grateful, kind and wise. Home now, and a small channel of hearing has returned to one ear. New hearing aids with high tech capabilities must be adapted to. We, I mean us three, and it seems the world beyond, live on an edge much of the time, not fully understanding why. Taking small steps, oh so infinitesimal, to hold on to that tenuous and very human thing we call faith. What is faith? What is the sacred and good in us when the big evidence of who we are points so much to the contrary?

Have you heard of the Japanese practise of Yutori? It is the art of spaciousness, of the unhurried walk through life (rather than the harried clambering up the ladder, or across the treadmill). Do you have spaciousness in your life? I have spent my life in houses with many rooms which I fashion into complex worlds, but also am daunted by the gathering of 'stuff'. 'Stuff' can be a treasure trove, and that can be a dangerous slippy sliding ground into a nostalgic hoarding of possessions.

It’s a weird thing to ‘still’ be living with my parents, ‘still’ be stuck in illness, ‘still’ be ‘at home’ rather than… where? Sometimes very famous and influential people say, ‘If I can help one person…’ or ‘If I have made one life better…’ but isn’t this the truth of who we really are? That each of us in our small and vital ways have made one life better, have held faith, kindness and joy, for one other life than our own? At least once a day for a parent, a child. Even, once a week, for a little curly coated dog? Even that seems beyond us sometimes, stretched as we are by historical and present day personal suffering. And still we return, represent, remember, recover. And occasionally, rejoice. So I go on, so you probably do too. I hope we’ll be alright. Time is moving us on regardless, the calendar turns to 2025. Happy New Year? From our Moominvalley to yours, may we remember what is good in each other.

Images of Fillyjonk, and Moominmamma by Tove Jansson)

MAKING TEA (A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO WAITING)

2024-12-21T12:37:00.003+00:00

Like Leila Chatti, I remember

the 6pm brewing of tea

for Dad, for me,

to get through the long winter evening

that stretched ahead

into an insomniac night.

A bridge between two terrors.

Sometimes it’s the hot water

bottle we are waiting for,

to take us from shivering,

back aching paralysis, into

a softer, more pliant acceptance

that this is it, this is our life.

And this small pocket of heat is love.

For me, it’s dihydrocodeine -

the friendly morphine coin

the size of a biscuit for a mouse.

Bitter, of course -

but as miraculous, as soothing

as the hot water bottle,

the hot tea

that frees me,

moves us forward

into the day, counting the hours,

tasting time in bitter sweet gulps -

a friendly fire of sorts.

(There are other less pleasant waitings -

for blindness, for death;

but we won’t speak of those,

just yet.)

© Shaista Tayabali, 2024

For the past two months I have been attending an online poetry workshop facilitated by the poet Trivarna Hariharan. Today is the shortest day of the year in this part of the world. The nights have been drawing in, foggy fingers envelop cars on the dark roads and Christmas lights are a gladdening sign. I wrote my poem using as a prompt the poem below by Leila Chatti - the poet in the very glamorous photo above!)

TEA

Five times a day, I make tea. I do this
because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling
of self-directed kindness. I’m not used to it—
warmth and kindness, both—so I create my own
when I can. It’s easy. You just pour
water into a kettle and turn the knob and listen
for the scream. I do this
five times a day. Sometimes, when I’m pleased,
I let out a little sound. A poet noticed this
and it made me feel I might one day
properly be loved. Because no one is here
to love me, I make tea for myself
and leave the radio playing. I must
remind myself I am here, and do so
by noticing myself: my feet are cold
inside my socks, they touch the ground, my stomach
churns, my heart stutters, in my hands I hold
a warmth I make. I come from
a people who pray five times a day
and make tea. I admire the way they do
both. How they drop to the ground
wherever they are. Drop
pine nuts and mint sprigs in a glass.
I think to care for the self
is a kind of prayer. It is a gesture
of devotion toward what is not always beloved
or believed. I do not always believe
in myself, or love myself, I am sure
there are times I am bad or gone
or lying. In another’s mouth, tea often means gossip,
but sometimes means truth. Despite
the trope, in my experience my people do not lie
for pleasure, or when they should,
even when it might be a gesture
of kindness. But they are kind. If you were
to visit, a woman would bring you
a tray of tea. At any time of day.
My people love tea so much
it was once considered a sickness. Their colonizers
tried, as with any joy, to snuff it out. They feared a love
so strong one might sell or kill their other
loves for leaves and sugar. Teaism
sounds like a kind of faith
I’d buy into, a god I wouldn’t fear. I think now I truly believe
I wouldn’t kill anyone for love,
not even myself—most days
I can barely get out of bed. So I make tea.
I stand at the window while I wait.
My feet are cold and the radio plays its little sounds.
I do the small thing I know how to do
to care for myself. I am trying to notice joy,
which means survive. I do this all day, and then the next.

Author’s Note

This poem was the first I wrote in a long period of drought. I was, as the poem alludes to, suffering from a depressive episode, one that dislodged my language and made the simple tasks of living significantly difficult. There was one act of self-care, however, that I could bring myself to do with regularity: make tea. All day, each day, I did it; it’s true. I made the connection one day between my love of—dependency on, even—tea and the cultural role and history of tea in my Tunisian ancestry. Tea is so beloved in Tunisia that when it was under French rule, colonial administrators believed Tunisians’ tea consumption was a psychological condition, teaism, similar to alcoholism, and that the amount of tea my people drank had poisoned both their bodies and minds. I was interested in examining my own experience with my body and mind, harm and care, pleasure and survival, as it relates to tea, and this poem tumbled out of that. As a note to this note, my pantry continues to be stuffed to the brim with tea—enough to last me over a year, at least.

photo images from Carthage magazine

MESSY BOOTS AND POCKETS OF JOY

2024-11-18T17:39:00.000+00:00

Do you recall two movies starring Kate Winslet titled 'Hideous Kinky' and 'Kinky Boots'? The first was based on a memoir by a woman whose mother cobbled together an interesting and beautiful life, off the beaten track. The second... well, it's just an intriguing sounding phrase, isn't it? Less of the hideous or kinky here, but if I were to title my cobbled together story, it would probably be Messy Boots. I mean that literally - I do sometimes forget that this is England and we have cream carpets (well, trying to stay cream) and I walk in after a good hack around the village with Samwise Gamjee, the cockapoo, and track mud here and there.

But mostly I mean that I live like a messy snail, leaving a trail of stuff in this room and that, where I start projects of creativity or purpose, and then tumble into illness and forget. Later, I return, the good elf to my messy troll, and pick up and tidy and sort. For thirty years, I have shaped a kind of happiness and peace from this little exercise, not so much of control, as of collage, collaboration with my two selves, my several selves.

There's another book I think of now... 'How To Make An American Quilt' by Whitney Otto. The movie starring Winona Ryder and Dr. Maya Angelou, is sweet. It's all very genteel and yet emotionally true to women of any time. Ever since the pandemic made realities virtual, made the impossible possible, we the various disparately located peoples of the world, are now able to come together in a thing called Zoom Rooms... we workshop in the same space and time across geography. So house bound elves like myself, even on troll-like days, can zoom with the likes of Fatima Bhutto, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Trivarna Hariharan and Suleika Jaouad to name a few of the writers and poets I have 'hung out' with. There are writing prompts, and we write together in silence, later sharing what we wrote if we have the courage, or even, for a while, being in silence during an entire reading hour cultivated by Naomi Alderman.

How do you hand make your life? Do you potter like I do? Are you tidy or messy? Is it childish to be messy and grown up to be tidy, or is it agelessly creative to be messy and openly vulnerable to display that you are not 'together' yet? Do you find, like I do, that there is so much to read and do, and never enough time, but that pockets of joy are in fact found in this mess of everything, everywhere, all at once? I am trying, as always, to cultivate an hour here and there to 'do something', and not be overwhelmed by how very small my doing is.

GAZA IS A DOOR

2024-11-09T00:36:00.003+00:00

Gaza is a door

into two worlds -

one that keeps us alive,

and one that kills us.

We die, either way,

at the door.

Death is a door

we knock on. And then run

far away from.

Life is a door

we can’t remember if we chose

to walk through.

Meanwhile, the river moves,

a running thing,

away and towards.

Meanwhile, I,

the other living thing

standing on this bridge,

autumn leaves in my pocket,

rain on my skin -

the tiniest of windows letting light in.

Artwork : @bypeoni Peonica Fernando

Poem featuring at dverse poets

NO MUD, NO LOTUS

2024-10-06T17:45:00.000+01:00

One year ago, on the 15th of October, I began an online course called Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, a seven week teaching course based on the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, his Plum Village monastics and Christiana Figueres, Costa Rican diplomat, UN Chief on climate change and daughter of three time revolutionary president of Costa Rica, José Figueres Ferrer. Dad had just been brought home from hospital by ambulance a few weeks earlier after his fall, Gaza was on fire after a co-ordinated military attack provoked the world into taking sides, Mum was hospitalised with a burst cyst and I was as scattered in my life as I am now with almost the exact same circumstances - one year later.

People say 'war is looming in the Middle East' as if war has not been the aim, the target of US and UK military invasions across Iraq and Afghanistan. You cannot keep amputating a people's children and expect no consequences. We all pay global prices for American greed, for capitalism's dream, for patriarchal power, for religious fanaticism. So although the Zen course was only available for a year, I find myself in need of it now as much as I did then. In Week Two, Brother Pháp Dung speaks of the three energies of Artist, Meditator and Warrior, which we need to keep in balance. At the heart of the teaching is the Diamond Sutra, the cutting through of the illusion of duality, of separate selves. Non-duality, or advaita, is the nirvana of all Buddhist teaching. An impossible feat, it seems, for the human mind to grasp. We would rather snarl and kill first, ask questions of deeper curiosity and understanding later. We act in pain, and out of pain, never having the patience to free ourselves from pain a different way, a slower way. Slowness, like illness, is an obstacle for power, for progress. As Christiana herself learned, without mud, the lotus flower cannot grow. Becoming a lotus flower takes time, and can be a painful process. As humans we seem to be in the business of avoiding pain for ourselves first. So how can the planet survive us?

IN SEARCH OF DELIGHT

2024-09-30T18:19:00.001+01:00

With every year that passes, I seem to accumulate a smaller number of blog posts. I think this is the inevitable fate of The Blog as a vehicle for our thoughts. Technology intruded in its rapid way and demanded a change - but for the writer, all the modes of transporting thought to word remain alive, however strained the thread.

It has been a very difficult two months. The beloved friend I wrote about in my last post, Victoria, would have read this post, but for her life in this human form taking flight on the 29th of August. A month later, Dad, who had been having trouble with infection in his ears, had episodes of losing consciousness, developed a high fever and was hospitalised with E.coli sepsis on the 18th of September. Here we are, at the end of the month and Pops is still in hospital. His infection markers have all returned to normal but his hearing has not. Communication has been a struggle but he is as ever graceful, remarkable and heartbreaking in the loveliest of ways. Dad, I miss you horribly. Come home soon.

In between, my brothers and Mum's brother have visited and done the supportive work that makes family continue to be family. In between, a young boy cycled up to my house and seeing a handbag unattended, stole it. This is the intersection of being human. My lapse of judgment in doing a careless yet trusting thing - oh it's a young boy I've seen many times before, cycling up to ask if he can wash our cars, I can leave my bag unattended, the front door open while I dash out to the back for... what? I cannot recall now, as I was waiting for friends to take me to Victoria's funeral. In my bag was my mobile phone - which, once upon a time, might not have impacted my life too much. But, today, our little devices hold worlds within them.

I had a bone infusion yesterday. I picked up a cold a few days ago while at the hospital with Dad, so I feel rather heavy and my eyes feel bleak. But Dad is sitting up, practising his standing with the walker and I have hope returning for the first time that we might bring him home by the end of next week. In the meantime, I am doing the homely things of cooking meals for Mum, chicken soup for Dad, laundering clothes from hospital and watering the precious indoor plants that Mum tends to with a far greener thumb than my own. I just pat them on the head and apologise and they pat me back and say they understand.

In the meantime, I have rewatched several old favourites... aren't movies one of the greatest reasons to stay alive, stay reminded of why we are and who we are? 'The Young Victoria' is sumptuous in its romantic portrayal of her courtship with Albert, 'Mrs Harris Goes to Paris' is delightfully Parisian in her search for the dreamiest Dior gown and 'Miss Potter', one of my most favourites... not only for its charming illustrations of Jemima Puddle-Duck and its central character being the excellently feminist Beatrix Potter, but also for the sweetest musical refrain...

'Let me teach you how to dance,

let me lead you to the floor;

simply place your hand in mine,

and then think of nothing more.

Let the music cast its spell,

give the atmosphere a chance;

simply follow where I lead,

let me teach you how to dance.'

THE YEAR OF YES

2024-08-10T00:44:00.000+01:00

I originally wrote this poem in response to turning down the opportunity to join my mother and her darling friend Victoria for a walk. I was tired. Maybe I’d recently had Rituximab. I sat in the doorway instead, waving off my friends. And soon found myself writing a poem about how I regretted saying no! These days, Victoria is the one unable to go for long walks among crunchy leaves, and the inevitable bump into a friendly soul for a catch up. Village life occurs in the entwined casual conversations that spring up on summer or autumn walks…and hospital life puts an end to those. It is a winter of sorts, a wintering of a life well lived.

I wish I had said Yes!

beloved,

When you asked me out to walk

among the leaves,
the turning leaves,

You were offering me
the sound of dreams,
And I turned you down, politely.

Not today, I smiled.
Perhaps, maybe, tomorrow?

But I wish I had said Yes!
beloved,
I wish we had shared this light.

Next time, don't ask.
Just take me!
Order me to dress!

I am going to need your help,
beloved,
To begin the Year of Yes.

TIME, FICKLE TIME

2024-08-05T13:35:00.000+01:00

Firstly, with thanks to Meenakshi DCruz and Dr. Sunil Pandya for personally writing to my mother and to me to express concern for my long silent absence from my blog. Five months now, I calculate. So, in this, my birthday month, I shall attempt to redress the balance with a newsy post.

I left England for Asia at the end of March after a lot of dithering because Dad wasn’t in top condition. He intimated as much a few days before my flight, and I nearly cancelled all plans. Perhaps that might have been wise, as I proceeded to encounter a grisly case of gastroenteritis in Singapore, ending up in Tan Tok Seng hospital. Unfortunately for me, there were no beds available on the ward, so I was placed on the corridor stretcher, where I proceeded to pick up pneumonia. I didn’t know it was pneumonia, only that I had a cough, which turned more and more devious as I once again contemplated the wisdom of travelling on to Kuala Lumpur. I did go. Twin nieces awaited! And ended up in a Malaysian hospital this time. Finally, I cut my trip short by two weeks and hustled home in case my luck really ran out!!

Dad was relieved to have me home. He had a few grisly infections himself. And then summer pretended to arrive, and with it Irfan, Theresa and the kids… we celebrated Dad’s birthday and now with them gone, here is Rizwan. In between, my uncle Zubin drives to Cambridge from London when he can, to read to Dad and take over the washing up, and generally add to the support network that has been much needed since Dad fell last autumn. What is time? One moment Dad was a father to toddlers, then teenagers, and now his son is father to a teenager.

The plants need watering. Meals must be cooked. My breaking heart walks herself into the garden. My sweet Wendy House into which I have poured a silly amount of love, paint, art and happy memories, is probably in her last days before she will be dismantled and taken to the skip. Everything comes and goes. We cling on, ever hopeful, to that which we love. And we long for The Other Stuff to pass. We are as fickle with time as time is with us.

I contemplate writing. And I crawl away from the words. I face up to the brutalities of modern empires and colonising powers and I crumble at the sight and sound of tortured bodies. They buried another young journalist in Gaza, without his head. Ismail was his name. Everyone compliments me on my nails. With my mouth I say nothing - my nails say Free Palestine, from those who endanger the olive trees, the watermelon, strawberry and poppy, the fish in the sea, the kites clinging on to the hopeful fingers of the children in the Gaza Strip.

A GOOD YEAR FOR SNOWDROPS

2024-02-29T15:14:00.001+00:00

I took myself for a walk today. My body aches, lately. Ha! Lately? For the past thirty years kind of lately... but yes, this sludge like treacle we move through while attached to our phones receiving news of a genocide adds a new layer of ache. When the doctors found a murmur on my ten year old heart, they kept an eye on it even as I moved countries. Lately... oh that word again... my heart is heavier, the beats a little unsteadier. "I think I'd like to send you to Papworth if you don't mind," said my cardiologist a few weeks ago. For an MRI at the big fancy heart hospital. "Anything I should know? Any questions for me?" she asked. She's lovely, and Northern Irish, so I think she would have been fine with me responding with the truth. "The children," I would have said. "The children of Gaza." I don't know what the figures are for bombed, amputated, under the rubble, but as we know, they are not numbers. Each one has a name. Although the ones who knew their names, who could write their names on the tiny white shrouds, are also gone. Motaz Azaiza, our traumatised young heroic journalist, puts it this way: "They passed," he says. I find his way of commenting on unjust death very moving. Sparse and factual, laden with helplessness, and yet, dignified. Even as he witnesses a physical reality beyond the language any one of us possesses. In war time, photographers from foreign western lands, are often given the wealthiest noblest prizes for capturing children on fire or dying. Motaz is Palestinian, and the people he photographs are family, friends, neighbours. The blood of his blood. No award or prize will ever ease his psychological torment.

On Valentine's Day, I took myself for a walk, because my body was aching, and I know there are snowdrops ‘out there’ and aconites and the beginnings of daffodils. There are bridges with river water, and even birdsong. There was unexpectedly more. I walked past the village hall and was invited in for the monthly Wednesday tea and cake. My first thought is often no, instinctive to avoid gatherings. Not just a pandemic protection, but a social defence. Years of "so what are you up to these days?" Now I find I can talk more easily having been accepted as The Daughter Who Lives With Beloved Parents. I have somehow moved into a more accepted phase. Not quite old, not too young. Just... a person. The Elders were glad to have me. I ate a slice of apple pie, and then washed up as many cups and saucers as I could before linking arms with a friend and walking on. "Rage helps keep my tears at bay," she said. It's nice having friends who know.

What now? The clock ticks on. The calendar advances. "We are living through a very dark time," my mother acknowledges. And that comforts me too. Dad asked me to start reading the autobiography of Sister Chân Không a day or two before we heard the news of the young US soldier, Aaron Bushnell, setting himself on fire in protest against American military aid to Israel and solidarity with the suffering of Gazans. Sister Chân Không witnessed the burning of the monk Thích Quảng Đửc on June 11, 1963. Speaking of photographs that won prizes… I could post it here. But you have already seen it. Maybe even at the time it flew around the world. My heavy heart, my heavy heart. It was never designed for this live witnessing of the worst of who we are to each other. So instead, some blossom and a poem, and later, perhaps a walk. It has been a good year for snowdrops.

every time I ever said I want to die

By Andrea Gibson

A difficult life is not less

worth living than a gentle one.

Joy is simply easier to carry

than sorrow. And your heart

could lift a city from how long

you’ve spent holding what’s been

nearly impossible to hold.

This world needs those

who know how to do that.

Those who could find a tunnel

that has no light at the end of it,

and hold it up like a telescope

to know the darkness

also contains truths that could

bring the light to its knees.

Grief astronomer, adjust the lens,

look close, tell us what you see.

EVERYONE SANG

2024-01-21T01:54:00.001+00:00

Our beloved friend, Annette Rowntree-Clifford née Johanna Abrahamsohn, died in December. She was nearly a hundred, so she knew life in all its shades of horror and glory. Some years ago, Annette's granddaughter wrote a beautiful poem about her Granny being a bird, flitting from room to room, 'her wings are deep blue folded cardigans and tucked inside are her stories'. Emily's poem was read at Annette's eulogy yesterday, and so, I believe, was the poem below, which I had written for Annette many years ago when I visited her. After the long drive to Leicester from Cambridge, I had to be put to bed like a small tired bear. Annette tucked me cosily into one of her grown up children's bedrooms. I felt frustrated as always by my time stealing illness. Precious time with Annette and Hugh lost because of my unruly body.

Hugh was a lifelong friend, at school and later at Oxford, of my father's brother Sadiq, and Dad spent all his summer vacations staying with the Cliffords while he was a medical student at St. Andrews. As Mum and Dad laughed and shared tea and stories together with their dear friends, I wrote this upstairs in bed:

Moving Plates

The perfect home
has something sentimental
resting side by side
with the practical.

Everything a meaning,

a memory,
a moment - even the broken,
the chipped china,
but especially the hand woven
crochet craft work,
and the little notes
you write yourself -

you leave for us
a forget-me-not trail
winding all the way
to 1939
when the plates
of your atlas
moved forever.

I do feel tired and heavy these days. And not because it is winter, and dark after four o'clock. After all, there are many blessings as always - not least that Dad and I walked down to the railway line twice this past week. I saw the sun and hustled Dad out. At the end of the driveway, I expected he would want to turn back as always. Expecting that, I hesitantly stepped out into the road and was met by blithe acceptance on his part. 'Anytime you want to stop and turn back, we can, ok Dad?' 'I'm fine!' he assured me, reassured me. So on we went. On - on - and out of sight.

Annette brought good cheer always. In person, over the telephone and in gifts. When I was a teenager, Annette sent me a huge postcard with one of A. A. Milne's Christopher Robin and Pooh sketches on the front. It was so special to me then, and has continued to be near me since. Wherever I have lived - home, university, rented annexe, garden shanny - I have blue tacked the postcard to a handy wall. Pooh is not just for children. Annette understood things like that. She 'got you' in the words of her son Tony. To have such people in my life - people who 'get me' - my heart should be a singing bird at all times. But. War, injustice and poverty make that impossible.

Tony ended the eulogy for Annette with another poem. This one by a poet made famous by a war. Siegfried Sassoon had a Jewish father, like Annette and her sister Gretel did. In 1914, Siegfried, being an enthusiastic Cambridge and Kent boy, was drawn into the English army. In 1939, Annette and Gretel, being German Jews, were shepherded to England on the kinder transport, waving goodbye at the train station to the parents they would never see again. Never again. Words we hear a lot of, but not fully meant - never again, for everyone. Did you know that Sassoon's father was a Baghdadi Jew, from an Iraqi family who had settled in Bombay? And did you know that Sassoon was sent to Palestine to 'recuperate from shell-shock' - the party line taken by a government angered by the anti-war poetry and speeches made by their tall, handsome, exceptionally brave soldier? Siegfried Sassoon wrote poetry in the spring of 1918, in Gaza and Ramallah, Palestine. He wrote, 'On the rock strewn hills I heard/ The anger of guns that shook/ Echoes along the glen./ In my heart was the song of a bird,/ And the sorrowless tale of the brook,/ And scorn for the deeds of men.' The bird he was listening to was a bulbul, whose song was heard often by my parents when we lived in Bombay. The discovery of these connections has made me happy. Annette is lifting my heart even as I write these words. 'It's complicated,' everyone says. As if a single life isn't complicated enough to fill trilogies. All we can hope is that as we near the end of our own complicated life, everyone lifts their voices to sing our tale.

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight,

As prison birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of

sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror,

Drifted away ... O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing

will never be done.

(photo of bulbul by Sunjoy Monga via Conde Nast Traveller)

IN BADGER’S WOOD

2024-01-05T05:33:00.004+00:00

Whose woods these are, I think I know;

They belong to my friends, Coco and Joe.

What if there were no fear, or loss,

but hawthorn berry, instead?

What if I could tell

hazel and maple apart,

not because one had more beauty -

there are rosehips, don’t forget,

and Vibernum Opulis

and crushed, scented pine.

Some catkins are soft green

caterpillars, plush with rain.

I learn a new story now

and again - like how rosemary

got her name - Rose Marinus -

‘dew of the sea’.

Everything ages. The cork

of the field maple marries moss,

and somewhere in the low bramble,

wild strawberries;

deeper still, the badger sett,

a whole world underneath.

And high above, birds calling.

‘Where do birds go when they die?’

Joe asks. ‘Why don’t they fall

in great heaps from the sky?’

Perhaps Merlin knew. Or Arthur,

when he was a boy, not exiled king.

What if we could go home?

What if we were found, instead?

Poets Open Link Night at dversepoets…

GOD IS A REFUGEE

2023-12-31T18:35:00.001+00:00

Write. What shall I write of?

Sleep? When shall I sleep?

These last few months have seen Dad fall, enter and leave hospital. And then Mum had a cyst burst at the back of her knee. She entered and left hospital. At home, I happily wear the crown of Angel daughter, exhausted but knowing I can escape to a warm bed in between cooking and cleaning and helping with this and that …

But write? What shall I write of?

And sleep? When my dreams are part of my waking hours of images of children in Gaza, victims of a genocidal video game player. Remote button massacre with changes in ingredients … sometimes white phosphorus which burns straight to the bone… or changes in style and type of amputation. Not shattered messily, but sliced so neatly, Professor Ghassan Abu Sittah has never seen the like in all his years of being a surgeon. The Israeli government apologised: sorry for your recent loss, we dropped the wrong sort of bomb on your refugee camp. We meant to drop the other one.

We managed to get the lights up … mum on the Christmas tree and across the windows in the rooms downstairs, me on my bedroom window and along the corridor outside. Any light will do to see me through.

I wished my brothers in their far away different time zone lands a happy new year. We give thanks for each other. All ok? All ok. Or to use the Arabic word - ‘tayyib?’ In so many of the clips I have seen on social media, I have heard Palestinians ask each other, ‘Tayyib?’ It’s used across the Middle East. From the word ‘Tayyab’ meaning Good. So in honour of my grandfather’s name, bestowed upon so many of us dotted around the globe, I try to uphold the virtue of goodness. Such a small word, ‘good’. Like ‘kind’. The small word, the small act, of truth and goodness, are the only way forward. But wait, what is truth? We live in a world in which each person, each community, holds fast to a different truth. And sometimes, will kill to prove their word is the truer word. With the better bomb. The right bomb.

So goodbye to another year. Much will be forgotten. Do we have the energy for 2024? The numbers look so strange to me. They make no sense at all. Haven’t we all been here far far longer than a mere two thousand and twenty three years? There goes one truth. Never mind. Shall we meet at the end of the road as it curves into 2025? What will be our losses then? What will we have learned? Ask me what I wrote. I hope to have an answer for my own question by then.

Ps: the title ‘God Is A Refugee’ is from a poem by Rashid Hussein. He also wrote a few words

On Poetry

Sing what you like, but…

Let everybody understand.

You have become ink and words.

So why do you talk?

Poet, produce!

But let the worker and the peasant understand.

Let the murdered understand.

And let the fighter understand.

BISAN

2023-11-16T21:38:00.001+00:00

Bisan,

your cat came to me in my dream.

White, yet not entirely - she was real -
not as a cloud, she was eating lime.
Yes, I was holding a round green lime
in my hand and she stole it to play.
Cats love to play, don’t they?
I say this as one who has never owned a cat
or even, I confess, known or loved a cat.
But this cat, your cat, I presume -

although she was perhaps any

of the lost cats doomed this Nakba -
this cat, I say, knew me well enough

to drape herself, Queen like, across

my throat, as I was lying down in my bed -
not the bed of my English home,

in the country that questions me on home,
but the home of my dreams,

the bed in my dreams,

where I grew from baby to girl,

to on the verge of something between

girl and woman to be.
Protecting my throat, but also

preventing me from moving, rising,

perhaps even speaking -

she was everything,

commanding the wholeness of me.
I feel her now - a heavy white scarf,

a sacred promise, bound to me,

as I to her - a symbol

beyond my understanding.

Ya Rahman. Ya Raheem.

Ameen.

Is anyone able to write much, if anything, at this time? This poem came, as my poems come, fast, as if in dictation, from a place of necessity, to tell someone something in the only way available to me. Part of me feels as if there has never been a genocide experienced this way - in the palms of our hands, in real time. And yet, the power of reading the testimonies of Primo Levi and Victor E. Frankl, not to ever forget Anne Frank, many years after the facts, did not render my heart any less broken. I say broken, but it is not yet so. Just chipped, cracked, rust filled, despairing of being human. This poem is dedicated to one of several young Gaza journalists I follow, like millions do, on Instagram, hoping, willing her to survive. She is Bisan Owda @wizard_bisan1, and the others are Motaz Azaiza @motaz_azaiza, Plestia Alaqad @byplestia, Yara Eid @eid_yara. Others have been killed already. I inch forward in this mural, baring my teeth through tears.

(First image via Bisan's instagram page @wizard_bisan1

Second is a mural I am working on at home

Poem participating in DVerse Poems Open Link night)

THE KITE FLIERS

2023-10-19T15:26:00.009+01:00

When kites fly
across blue skies
and border divides,

Gaza and Israel unite.

We make the kites,

we fly the kites,

over the wells of hate.

We carve the sails,

we choose the colours for the tails;

in ribbons of orange and red and green -

we speak across the steel.

When we fly kites

across blue skies,

Gaza and Israel unite.

In 2011, when I watched the Dispatches documentary on the Children of Gaza, I wrote two poems. The first was for a little girl named Amal, who was nine years old, and suffering terrible migraines from the shrapnel in her head. The second was about the kite flying festival set up along the border, to foster some kind of fun and relief for Palestinian children. A competitive spirit with Israeli children followed, but years later, members of both Hamas and the IDF, grown men, used kites to set fields and warehouses alight. There was an escalation. People died, including a 15 year old Palestinian teenager. The festival was in danger of being cancelled.

Moments after I had located this second poem, I learnt that last Saturday, the 7th of October, the Israeli family who were responsible for setting up this year’s kite flying festival, were shot by Hamas. Their kibbutz was on the border. My friend, the writer Joanne Limburg, tells me, ‘It is better to have a breakable heart than a hard one.’ So I, we, must find a new way to hope.