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Shams
Shams-i Tabrizi was Rumi’s intimate friend
and spiritual mentor.
I stayed awake those short midsummer nights
When naked druids danced beneath the moon’s
Hypnotic glow performing pagan rites
And marking stones and trees with sacred runes.
Years later, in the vatic Persian sun,
I delved into the bright ecstatic verse
Of Sufi masters, learned that God is One,
And thought that faith would always reimburse.
But now my fastest friends are dead and gone,
Departed during my haphazard search,
And thus I often wait for light to dawn
Inside a cheerless synagogue or church.
Perhaps my outlook wouldn’t be so gloomy
If I had only read a bit more Rumi.
.
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Let’s Not Forget New Orleans
In Texas, real survivors show the stuff
They’re made of in July, or thereabout.
Vermonters, as a rule, are smart enough
To know that crocks of homemade sauerkraut
Are necessary provender to feed
A family from mid-January on.
But who can understand what pressing need
Midwesterners, hermetically withdrawn,
Are equal to? Or ever fathom how
The dwellers on the far Pacific coast,
While we’re snowed in, continue to endow
Our salad bars with winter greens and toast
The health we’re partial to with purple wine
From overflowing cellars? It’s a truth
Beyond the slightest doubt that just as fine
A time is had in quarters of Duluth,
Chicago, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Austin,
St. Louis, Denver, Chapel Hill and Fargo
As in the wards of New York City, Boston,
Las Vegas, San Francisco or Key Largo.
Americans, like mannequins, get plastered
In styles as different as they are the same,
And happy hour brings out the charming bastard
Our Founding Fathers saw no need to frame.
.
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Equilibration
The boiling kettle drum
that bids an orchestra
to rise above the pit
delivers only echoes
of what is yet to come:
one good Parousia
will surely manumit
a host of arid Meccas.
.
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C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
“Let’s Not Forget New Orleans” made me laugh aloud with its wide-ranging commentary on the entire nation and the different ways in which we deal with the weather and regale ourselves with food and drink.
But above all else, the perfect structure of these six quatrains delights me — the whole poem (descriptive, comic, satirical, and witty) is as carefully constructed as a Swiss watch! The enjambment alone is brilliant, keeping the entire poem to just six sentences.
And the last two lines are an unexpected slap in the face… just the right touch of cynicism, like a dash of Angostura bitters in a champagne cocktail. This poem is pure Kip Anderson.
I’m glad, Joseph, that you found the poem funny. It has been sitting in my archives for, oh, probably at least a decade. You can imagine how much fun it was coming up with localities that rhymed and/or were a good metrical fit.
Very entertaining poems, C.B. And impressive rhyme and meter. Fun to read!
I can’t explain, Paul, what I don’t understand. Sometimes things just happen.
Always a wealth of arresting rhymes.
Fortunately, Stephen, rhymes are free for the plucking in the noosphere.
Thereabout/sauerkraut — Orchestra/parousia — fabulous rhymes! And beautifully-worded humor, used for fascinating topics!
No more a crime,
There’s always time
For pungent rhyme
Unless your preference
Is showing deference
To modern slime.
I am drawn to poetry that creates worlds rather than describe the world.
Shams does just that in the form of a sonnet.
We all should read more Rumi.
Yes, Joe, there are plenty of temporal irregularities in “Shams”. And it’s anybody’s guess who the narrator of the poem actually is.
My favorite passage (so far) of Rumi’s is this:
Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.
I was once told by an Iranian Muslim (a Shiite, no doubt), that his verses rhymed in Farsi, for otherwise, he insisted, what would be the point? Rumi’s corpus of writings is sometimes referred to as the Koran in Farsi.
I’m glad you put New Orleans in the title of the drinking poem. I have never seen so many so drunk as in Louisiana. About the Founding Fathers, Washington certainly made quick work of the Whisky Rebellion, but I think that was because moonshiners in the territories didn’t go for taxation without representation.
Rumi, especially your current favorite poem, seems to have all the appeal of Rod McKuen turned Exotic Intellectual. Both of them have made millions of readers happy. Maybe Shams, too, if he had just stuck with his friend and stopped the haphazard searching!
That, Margaret, was pretty much my idea when I realized that I had left New Orleans out of my catalog of localities. I’ve had a drink or two in that city myself, but I never ended up in a Bourbon St. gutter. Although I like a bit of Rumi with my tea in the morning, I wish the translator had taken the trouble, as Fitzgerald did with Khayyam, to preserve the Farsi rhymes.
I can’t stand Rumi.
So sue me.
I knew that, Joseph, because I read your poem about Rheumy a year or so ago. You might feel different if his translator (Coleman Barks) had been able to render the formal aspects of Rumi’s poems properly. You won’t be hearing from my lawyers.
“Equilibration” has a fascinating rhyme scheme I have rarely encountered. Besides that, there are the rarely used words “Parousia” for second coming and “manumit” for release from slavery. Wonderfully done. As for “Shams,” I must admit only a tangential knowledge of Rumi. As one who never imbibes spirits, I still had to laugh at what seems to be your mantra–there must be a happy hour anytime of the day, week or year somewhere and for some reason.
Oh, Roy, I think you are an imbiber of spirits, just not the liquid kind.
Three truly unique poems with most original ideas behind them. Your use of vocabulary always keeps me on my toes, C.B., as does your use of enjambment and rhyme. Of the three my favorite is “Shams” (I read a pun embedded in your choice of speaker reinforced with the poem’s one-word name) which is a fascinating character study of a historical figure who seems to blend into a non-historical Everyman. Am I reading too much into this here? Either way, the poem is infused with exotic imagery and frustrated but intriguing spiritual contemplation — a sonnet in the service of dramatic monologue.
Unidirectionality is a perversion of straight talk, and none of your observations vary widely from my own. What you said about the “blend into … Everyman” is very telling, and made me realize that I hadn’t quite closed the circle.