Jasmine
For Basim Furat
You say poetry
is our lasting friend;
after our lovers and our friends
have gone, it will always be
there - it will never leave us.
So hear the way it sings -
it fills our dreams
with golden memories; that's why
I hear in your words a song,
and it is sung like Maqams.
Sometimes though it resounds
like a battlescape, filled with
the splinters of bombs; it haunts
your page, it wrestles the love
from your pen, but you
are strong and cast it off.
At night it shakes you inside
and you remove its fear from your
pillow - and how you yearn,
but still it follows you - yet long after
when those in power have gone
and the gilded domes point your way
your poems will be sung - just
look how they spring, even now, like
fresh jasmine, blossoming in the house’s light.
Mark Pirie is an internationally published New Zealand poet, editor, publisher and archivist for PANZA (Poetry Archive of NZ Aotearoa). In 2016, his selected poems, Rock & Roll, was published by Bareknuckle Books, Australia. Other books include a biography, Tom Lawn, Mystery Forward (ESAW, 2018), an artbook Folk Punk (2020) and Gallery (poetry) published by Salt, England, 2003. He is a former founder/editor of JAAM, 1995-2005, publisher for HeadworX, and edited broadsheet: new new zealand poetry from 2008 to 2022. His new book is Black Gold, forthcoming from Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop.
