R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 19

Al-Adha

I pictured you among the lambs.
(I have memorised it: curled paisley
And every splash of wooly white)
I thought, she is the fleece itself, the purity
And the sacrifice that taketh away
The sins of the world. But I knew
That no one does that--really—not you
With your flowing hair pinned or unpinned,
In bed dreamless or in dreams. I knew
You could not wash this away. Do we always
Have to kill the lamb to make forgiveness
Work for us? What is Arabic for ‘efficacious?’
فعال I think there are things in you I need
To kill: there will be blood, there will be sadness
But (as we say) there will be life after this
And only slowly comes the sacrifice.


For Molly at the end

The Cipher

your hair yes
your hair is
your eyes are lovely but
your thin fingers
and dark skin you
are not sure
whether the
last boy who looked
at you wanting you
within him or thinking
curious you can’t know
because you think you
are what you want that
what you give has never
before been felt
or touched or given
ah! how sad because
you know really
the touch has touched
and the feeler has felt
too much like you
no unguardianed angels
there is no more
a misstart here.
he wanted
a soul and fears
nobody is hers or his

The Source of the Nile

Leave her to Africa.
Leave her to the unblue water
and the unwhite flowing water
and the brown dust and the ragged men
on carts delivering milk.

She must remain a stranger
to the tide, to the swell and spray,
the glide of slim kayaks poised to overturn.
She needs the hot brown dust
under her dark feet in summer
and the mud that sinks buses
when the rains soak the market
and the stands. You are not the dust
and you are not the drowning rains.
She needs chaotic children after school
and not the ordered rhythm of tea and discussion.

She needs the veil
you trembled to unpin, and other hands
and other tongues on her sweet back and thigh.
She does not like your jokes: she smiles
because she understands what you are doing
and what you are trying to be.
She knows you are a trespasser, a thief
of smiles, a connoisseur of hearts,
African hearts that burn with a gold
you will never possess or choke with a ring.

忍耐

If I had tried to kiss you when I took
The cup from your hands and said quietly
I don’t know why you’re here, but when I look
At you I see a thousand years of poetry,
What would you have done? If I had brushed
Your cheek and swept aside the hair that
Fell askew, or if I had touched
Your lips gently, with a single caveat?
You would have said, My friend not all
Love is your love, not closeness and kisses
Not looking for summer when it’s barely fall,
Not searching for the things nobody misses.
I watch your eyes move from mine to the floor.
This truth is intuition, nothing more.

In the End

You thought that love’s a lump of gold
Or like the stories you were told,
Or that true love is like the fire
That burns to make the night a liar.

You thought that love is like a thief
Who steals your linen handkerchief–
Or, like the lightening in the skies,
A mere electrical surprise

You thought that love would never come
Or’s gone too soon like pirates’ rum.
You thought that love had cheated you;
You thought true love was only two.

You saw your love personified
In roses and in girls who cried;
In messages that never came
Or when they did were all the same.

And in the end you came to know
That love is just the to and fro,
The rumpled sheets in bed and nest
From girls who loved you, but not best.

What the Wind Said

I have been
thinking
only about you

how when
you speak
the air slows

before
the music
of your voice and blows

gently
round

my head
then passes through.

Of Capture

There are some dark eyes
we should not explore because
we will see ourselves in what
they want and what they
will destroy. On Wednesday
you don’t turn your head
quickly enough, and she
sweeps like a quick breath
into the one small unguarded
corner of your soul that hides
desire and passion from her.
You see something different
in her eyes-pleasure, maybe even
the wonder a young soldier
feels when he stands without
witnesses over a dead body:
Did I do this?
Is this what it means
to take a life, a soul—
in less than a minute? Yes.

Like Her

I asked you for words
you said let's talk about us
(but you meant not us)
you said you have a right to be
I said help me with words
but you said find your own
go on and that minute
drenched in confusion I loved
your pure wrath I understood
your dark eyes I watched
your body stiffen and your
hand turn into a swishing sickle
as insult rolled from your
lips like confetti over
a groom's shoulders you were
Cassandra and I believed
your words but like hers
even if they were true
I could only wait and see
whether Agamemnon will die again.

A Modern Hafiz

you are translucent
do not fret about us
light comes through you I sent
you a message it said such
tender things did you get it?
I mean did you understand
that I will never forget
you no I will upend
heaven and scour the stars
to find you if you leave me
I will go to the farthest far
reaches of the pagan sea
to bring you back how can you
disappear being translucent
no you cannot cannot
for light needs you

Unwritten (for M. K.)

I am not a steel desk holding
clutter dull-nibbed pencils

no I am a typewriter
with broken keys waiting
to be fixed no ribbon no ink

to make my impression
on paper no way to make
the words that might

bend you to look
closely at the page,
at what you will find

blurred at the edges
misshapen through use
but spelled right: it will say

Allow me to tell you
you are sunlight in this room
how I starve to be

in another place with you
not here where I am
a machine unable to write

the words that might bend you
to look closely at the page

how I want you to strike my
broken keys to spell ‘touch’
‘love’ ‘embrace’ and ‘kiss’.

but you will only pass by
maybe running your soft finger
slowly over my middle row

from A to L spelling nothing
I want to read it is
sad (you said) this difference--
what? between my unstruck keys

my metallic sameness to the desk
and your lips kiss embrace love
I will never feel touch know

or have endless sad as
unwritten words are or seem.