THE BOOK OF HOURS (2012)

This collection—named after Rainer Maria Rilke’s collection of poems—has become an annual project in recent years during the Bahá’í month of fasting. Compared to previous years, the content in this collection is broadened somewhat beyond the themes of fasting and renewal. And the poems themselves are even more terse and laconic than in the past. Also unlike previous incarnations, I did not sit down to write a single poem every day. Instead I wrote when I was feeling reflective, and had several bursts where as many as 10 to 12 poems emerged in a single session. I then selected 19 of those—one for each day of the Fast—for this collection, plus one for the Feast of Naw-Rúz, the Bahá’í New Year.

The winter was too long, it took more
than our blood and bones.

*

I fast though my fidelity
has been deemed weak
yet I continue to fast

*

early morning
stories of my grandfather
a man I never knew
but wish I did.

*

Having lived in a culture
where spirit is alienated
to a machine
inspired by what faith
am I to carry on this crusade?

*

body is too sick to fast
yet the soul is too weak
not to fast.

*

They were forty against hundreds,
their sacrifice lost in a world of heirs
routinely knocking on peoples’ front doors.

*

a red ruby ring
and a story that keeps the illusion
going all these years

*

I wish things wouldn’t bruise,
we went all the way to the edge

—these past few years.

*

Eight hours alone in the kitchen,
but surrounded by waiting people we can’t see.

*

dreams of a good life have all gone away
as I stand on the banks of a filthy pond
yet spring is just beginning.

*

a picture of the last two women of that generation
all future reunions will not be the same
though for others that change has already come

*

No more choices, just coercion—
our ladder to the stars
won’t reach high enough.

*

Thoughts can remain bottled up
inside your head, but what’s in your heart
escapes through an old window
and fills the air around me for days.

*

rain and wind
not sure which is the cause
of my irritability today

*

Three separate ideas that all need each other to stand up.

*

plum blossoms only now fall
in commercial spaces and parks
designed by private developers

—nature’s gentrification

*

Awake before sunrise:
remembrance of God,
or the restless agitation of the soul?

*

While trying to save the world
and atone for past sins
he lost his family.

*

stagnant muddy waters
what was once a few years
have now become a life
against surrounding scenes
our candle being so small and faint

*

.:For the Feast of Naw-Rúz:.
  
A rainless winter
and as spring arrives
only now do the hills turn green.