The Garden Where Nothing Went Wrong

This sense that something

went wrong.

This sense that we have fallen

and taken the world down with us.

The sense that all

might have turned out better

had we not made some

colossal mistake

in the beginning.

The strangest feeling that

nature disapproves of us

and every flower is shouting

about some impending cataclysm,

because our dark mother dared

to taste the fruit

of an unbearable delight.

Dear friend, don't you know

that humans hesitate and cower

before uncertainty like this

age after age?

It's the way we feel when we

don't know how to breathe,

when we don't know how

to pause between our thoughts

and root down in the garden

between heartbeats.

Some say heaven will appear

when this tribulation is over.

I say heaven is an infinitesimal 

grain of silence

at the tip of your exhalation,

just before you receive

the gift of another breath.

Meet me here.

We'll dance barefoot under

the tree of stars

where nothing ever went wrong,

the olive tree that trembles

out of your swirling hips,

bearing your heart, your tongue,

your ripening eyes.

We'll spin on a pollen bindhu 

a the center of a poppy

in the valley just beneath

your breastbone,

crushing dark clusters

of bittersweet desire,

naked in the downpour

of radiance.

Why not let your desolation 

ferment into sparkling wine?

Why not drown both fear and hope

in the golden outrage

of perfect joy?


Painting: Hafiz, by Mahmoud Farshchian