Snow-Cover Mapping and Monitoring in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas
Aching For The Hindu Kush
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Transcript of Aching For The Hindu Kush
Aching
for the Hindu Kush
Babur in Farghana
The clear air crackles over the steppe,
trembles blue of a pool where breast of bird
skims the surface like a sigh.
His tunic is splattered with mud, ropes of hair
fall on eyes turbid like dark lake,
nomadic blood runs like streams that crisscross
the land his ancestors essayed.
Turban laced with sapphires cradles
rinds of melons from Farghana country.
He reads the horizon as he would a poem,
counts the rolls of hills fading purple at distance;
considers he’ll pitch his kingdom where blue
gets ashen grey.
Babur in Samarkand
Breeze from the hills blows between walls of mausoleum,
ascends on ribs of blue domed prayers
to wrap him in muteness.
The city carries memories of watercourses that
like veins rumble and knot close to the
heart of the land.
Gardens are young maidens that open their blouse,
bare pomegranates - a rash of desire smears an ache
that like a needle pricks him.
He lays her on the cool mosaic of his colonnade,
the cool stone breathing through the pores in her neck
wrapped in a turquoise band.
City pants in tumescence with sharp cries of battle,
the young emperor is the dervish spirited
by his passion for the land.
Babur in Kabul
The northern wind from the Hindu Kush
set the talisman tied to the doors jangle,
prayers of souls drowned the lake, greened
the meadow. Dead skin from wintry nights
in the cold desert fell away like vermins in
the warm embrace of smoked rhubarb
that filled the air of the hill country,
blue with traces of silver and lapis lazuli.
Fields stained red with madder roots
spread like shawl of heavens at his feet, but
he sought echoes of different nights,
visions of lands that entombed lost legacies.
Flowers of Jade on her Tomb
I am inspired for a sweetened coffee,
the cup engraved in moss colored flowers
from the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal.
Breath hangs like whisper in the silence
of the vault, pollen of thickly scented spider lily
falls like the rustle of her tussar silk.
It becomes cumbersome to remove
layers of pearl every night, women whisper
in the corners of the palace that he takes her
when she fills with eggs. It’s easy to spoil coffee
in the full view of the marble building, the moon
curdles into milk like cancerous scars from fumes,
loss and pain. Sweat from the palm leaves salt,
etchings of flowers cloud like the muddied river
as froth of coffee gently bursts raining coolness.
Poems inspired by Babur and Mumtaz Mahal