MAHUR

Notes of the prelude to a song in Mahur
Strike a chord that enters my ears.
My being begins to throb.
The chest, lungs and my heart get filled
With something akin to, but not quite air !
A blooming takes place, deep inside.
Petals open quickly and wide.
What flower in me was this, that had remained closed ?

No longer grounded, my essence rises from the floor.
The body-mind unaware of space.
Deep sighs follow, as I allow the flow.
Eyes fill with mild tears
I know not if they are for joy, longing or just sorrow.

The glass tea kettle on the stove begins to cry.
Bubbles rise faster and faster, racing to the top,
Anxious to join its source above,
That unconfined source all around.
They coincide maybe with the vital airs
That throb inside of my being.
They too must escape to join with the Timeless
Perhaps even to the distant past.

Questions arise within, as I listen
To the tantalizing elevating lyrics of Leyla Hanim's
Yanarsan nâr-ı aşkınla yanayım ya Resûlallah

I know I am in love !
With what ? With whom? I know not.
Only shades of this love have I felt for my loved ones.
Never such original, intense, consuming passion.
Is it the melody I ask?
Or the honeyed words of a language so new ?
Or the two combined to plot a fatal attraction ?
Am I leaping over many a birth to a distant past ?
Is this why I felt so much at home in that foreign land,
Where I had been a few months ago ?
Pointing perhaps to a life that I may have lived
Many aeons, long, long ago.

Oh sweet soul, where is the crystal ball,
Into which I may take a peek
To see where I may have been ?
Who gave and who received this cornucopia of love ?
A trace of which remains in me relived in a song ?
Perhaps this is a passion not for a human
But for an ancient land with a hoary past.
A land where civilizations have been covered
Again and again by the sands of Time.
A land where Hittites, Phrygians, Lydians, Assyrians
Why even Greeks, Romans, Mongols and Turks
Have left their unique imprint.
All of which only open for me
Through a Musical Portal of Love
Flanked by melody and lyrics.

The song now complete.
Many a question left unanswered.
The petals still wide open,
Brings a reluctance to get to work.
To the dishes yet to be washed I go.
Only a faint external part of me is in this act.
The rest in the air, somewhere.
And in time like the water overflowing from the kettle
Extinguishing the flames below,
So too my being returns to the here and now.
Still, for a while
I see, without really seeing.
I hear, without really hearing.
I am, without really being
In this world !!
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Vasanti
March 23 2016, Petaluma