Pir Muhammad Karwan was originally a seasonal nomad from the mountains bordering Pakistan, in the thickest forests

remaining in Afghanistan. During the war, he was a teenager and they smuggled weapons and other illicit things back and forth. At one point in the early 1990s, there was a poetry competition held in Peshawar, Pakistan, by Spedai magazine. Karwan's submission, a long poem called The Poplars are Speaking stood out far beyond the others. No one had seen this sort of folk surrealism before. The following consists of the introduction and two primary poems in Karwans 2002 collection, The Fairys Palm.

Introduction I dont know how much of a poet I may or may not be. But now, as I recollect in particular the moments of my childhood, it strikes me that I was much more of a poet in my childhood. Even now, in painting truly good pictures of contemporary momentstragedies, happinesses, and beautyI rely on those fleeting, intensely colorful moments of childhood, and it is them which I use to construct the melodic walls of my poems houses. In my childhood, the Fairyspirit of letters and lexicon was not under my command, though I certainly did have a command over the poetic sensibility of a child. I felt the stories of fairies to be so real that I would see them in my dreams. In my childs mind and imagination I would create this fairy, and would follow after her so intently that I would wear out even sandals of iron. Then deep in the wilderness, a meditating ascetic would give me the Secret Name (ism-e azam), would give me an incantation (du), and I would get cloaked in fairy wings. In childhood there is a pure love of nature and imagination free of artifice and analysis, and this very same love shapes a mans future. The familial environment also has an influence on a childs future. Even though neither my father nor my mother were poets, my mother and father instilled in me a great deal of poetic sensibilities. My mother spent her childhood and youth in a great deal of sorrow and tragedy. This tragedy is my inheritance from my mother, and to this day I have a great love for tragic arts. I enjoy tragic music; I enjoy tragic films, stories, novels, and poems. My mothers four brothers died, one after the other. Once I had gotten a bit fat and healthy, alongside other stories my mother would tell me the stories of how her brothers died. After the stories, she would cry; I would kiss my mother and plead with her, saying, Thats enough, Mama, dont cry! Every now and then, my mother would say a landay in her brothers memory, in a tiny voice. My mothers voice sounded so sweet it would bring me to tears. I mentioned earlier that in my childhood I did not yet have a way with letters and words; if I had, there were many feelings I would have rendered poetic through the force of letters and words. I write for you one recollection which is very much like a poem: My mother had built me a swing in the room on our second story; and I used to swing in it. From the window of that second story room, I would look directly out at the mountains. And

straight ahead, the mountains would also swing. I couldnt understand it: How are these mountains swinging? When I would get off the swing, the mountains would also stand still in their place. One day, a very fine rain had fallen. I was swinging on my swing, when all of a sudden I noticed the mountains. There was a rainbow (Pashto: da buday tl) = The old ladys swing) unfurled in their skirt-hem, refracting their green and golden hues. The mountains were swinging; I said to myself, Oh, so that must be the mountains swing, and thats how they must be swinging! and I thenceforth called that green and gold scattered across the mountains the mountains swing (da ghruno tl). In this very way I would fall into poetic states. My father was a very deeply devout and spiritual man, and many times he would get up in the middle of the night to offer tahajjud prayers. Every now and then, he would wake me up too. I loved the quiet in the dead of night, and the glowing of the stars. And every now and then, he would show me these two stars, sort of close together in the sky. One of them was a brilliant, pure white. And my father would tell me, Thats Layla The other one was a little smaller than the fat, brilliant white one, and was a little reddish. My father would say, and thats Majnun. They both love each other very much, and through Gods power, they climbed up into the sky. Once a year, they take each other in their embrace, and if someone sees them like that in each others arms, God would grant that person whatever they might ask for. In my heart, I used to wish that I could see them in each others embrace; then I would say to myself, Well, fine; if I were to see them in each others arms, then what would I ask for? I didnt like the idea of asking. These are the sorts of thoughts Id be occupied with as I was carried off to sleep. My father used to have such an enormous love for honeybees. When winter had passed, our nomad camp would move back to our hamlet in the mountains. Our mountains are hidden under dense oak forests; there were some coniferous forests as well. My father used to watch the bees at the edge of a spring in the skirt-hem of the forests. The bees would come to the spring, take a mouthful of water, and then return back into the forest. My father would watch where they went, and then follow after them into the woods. Occasionally, wed find the bees nest in some grand old oak tree. Flashing in the midst of the suns rays like airborne sparks, the bees would enter a hole in the oak, and some would come out as well. This picture is still alive in my mind even today, and even today I still cant encompass this beauty within words. My father would bore a small hole in the oak, to get at the honeybees. Thered be honeycomb after honeycomb in there. Hed plunge his fingers into the swarm of bees; one or two would sting his fingers and hands; but my father never lost his concentration. When hed get stung on his face or near his eyes, hed ask me to pull out the stinger, and Id pull it out. When the honeybees stung me, Id cry, but my father would say that the sting was a cure for any and all ailment. Amidst the swarm, my father would find a long, golden honeybee. Hed hand it to me, saying Take it very, very gently and carefully. This is the queen, and she cant sting. Id gently hold the queen in my fingers. How soft she was! My heart would get a sweetish sort of feeling for her. My father would take a small pair of scissors from out of his waistcoat pocket, and clip the queens wings. Then he put her in an empty honey jar, leaving the lid open. The bees would swarm all around the lip of the jar, and enter in droves. Then hed close the lid, and hed cut the honeycombs out of the nest. Hed give me one small slab of honeycomb; Id eat two little pieces and be satisfied. Then within seconds, the honey would make me thirsty, and Id lay down beside an ice-cold spring, and drink, while my father filled up a jar of honey, and then wed set

off for home. We would be so happy, walking down the path. My face would be all swollen with bee stings, and my fingers would be all blistered. My father would hold up a mirror, and Id have a good laugh at myself. Now, I used to ask my father questions about anything and everything. And so I asked him how honeybees actually make honey. My father said, The honeybees come and land on a flower-branch. They bring all the petals back into their chest or large pot, and the queen slowly, gently walks over them. The petals which she passes over change into honey. In every room of our house, we had two or three honey-hives inside wooden chests or clay grain storage canisters, which we used to call tombake. From dawn to dusk, the bees would bring all sorts of flowers back to our house in their wings. The bees were so beautiful with the petals stuck to their sides! I used to sleep in the second-story room, with my bed placed right up against the back of one of the tombake. At night Id look out the window at the sky, filled with stars. Id look at the Layla and Majnun stars, to see how close together they were. And then Id listen to the humming of the bees. Sometimes Id gently knock on one of the tombakas boards, and the bees buzzing and humming would get a little louder. Id tell myself that the queen must have walked over quite a lot of the petals by now, and many of them would have been converted to honey. Id wish that I was a queen bee, and could convert petals into honey. My father also told me that honeybees are very noble creatures. If a house should become irreligious, or if discord should enter it, or if a cruel king should come to rule over the country, the bees would flee that house and run off into the wilderness. The honeybees beautiful prophet was so sensitive that he could not help but cry. So they would take the prophets tears, and God would give them the power to turn them into honey. My father told me that if we want to keep bees, we need to cultivate purity and holiness in our hearts as well. I heard this from my father, and it stuck in my memory. The moments of my life passed, like bees in the embrace of flower petals. Then, when I had gotten to be somewhat of a youth, and I was gradually approaching the doorstep of maturity, and my voice had deepened just a little, but I had not yet dreamed the sort of dreams I read about in the Maniyyat al-Musalli, my father removed a honeycomb slat from one of the clay beehives. There were black bees walking all over the white honeycomb. And right there in the middle of one big white honeycomb, there were two pods. My father told me that in each of these pods, there is a new queen. If we let them stay there, two new queens will be born in this hive, and theyll destroy the order of this colony. The new queens will each take a number of bees with them when they leave, and the colony will become weak as a result. My father took out a knife, and gently slit the pods such that the queen larvae inside would not be cut. He wet some of the earth which had fallen off the hive. It smelled so nice; I used to love both the sweet smell of honey and the swell smell of wet earth. My father closed up the hive, filling up the cracks in the slat with the moist earth. A week later, thick swarms of bees emerged from the holes of that very same tombaka, and began flying around through the air. They kept swarming and swarming. They were wanting to fly off to that distant forest, but my father prevented them by throwing some small pebbles at them. The bees ended up flying to a mulberry tree standing next to our house. They formed sort of a swarm on one the high mulberry branches, all tangled up with each other. The suns rays caught them, and as they fluttered their wings, they looked very beautiful indeed. Every now

and then the wind would shake it, and I thought it would wreck this colony just as surely as if children threw rocks at it. Im not sure how, but it didnt break up. My father climbed up the mulberry tree, carrying a sort of vessel he fashioned out of a dry, hollowed-out gourd in order to capture the bees. I climbed up the mulberry after him, too. My father searched around in the mass of bees for the queen, and after a few minutes of hunting he found her. He picked her up very, very gently, and told me to take the scissors out of his pocket. I got out the scissors, and clipped her wings. My father placed her into the hollow gourd, gradually put handful after handful of bees in there after her, and climbed down the tree with the vessel full of bees. Then he put this new queens already sizable colony into another empty tombaka, giving them a few honeycomb slats as well so that they could produce honey for themselves after a few nights. I asked my father, A few days ago, you cut out two pods from that other tombaka; so how did this third queen get born? Laughing, my father said, I left that queen alone, because that other tombaka was very strong. It seemed to me that we could make another hive out of it. Then, not two days had passed when the hive went into an uproar once again. A small swarm separated itself from the colony, and assembled itself on a nearby wall. My father found the queen inside it, but this time he did not clip its wings. He handed her to me, telling me to take her in the palm of my hand gently, so as not to kill her, since the death of a queen is like the death of a domains king. I took the queen gently into the palm of my hand, as she fluttered her wings softly; and this fluttering of her wings tickled my heart as well. My father told me, Take this queen to the green wheat field and set her free. A question started rising up in my heart. My father started saying something else to me, but I cut him off and asked, Father, you said that you let that other queen alone so she could start a new colony. So why arent you leaving this queen alone to do the same? My father smiled and said, You ask so many questions! Then, answering my question, he said, Two reasons. Number one: this queen has attracted only a very small number of other bees to her. That is, a queen should have many, many subjects, but this one had very few. And number two, that first colony would have gotten too weak. I just hadnt seen this queens pod. Sometimes, a queens pod can be in some hidden corner, and you just dont see it My question was answered; I left the house quite happily. I felt so important, since I had the queen bee with me. I arrived at the green wheat field. I mixed my bare feet into the pure green field. My blistered bare feet bruised the delicate, green stalks, and a sweet grassy smell rose up into the air, a smell just as much as sweet to me as honey and damp earth. Slowly and carefully, I opened my hand. The long, golden, silky queen was walking around on my palm. Her wings were unharmed, but, God only knows why, she didnt fly off. My heart softened to her. I slowly and gently blew on my palm, and she flew off into the embrace of the green wheat field. I returned home happily. And I asked my father, Why did you make me take her far from the house, to the green field? Smiling again, my father replied, Precisely because its far from the house, and the other tombake. If we had set her free around here, she would have probably entered one of the tombake and ruined an already established dynasty. But on the other hand, killing a queen is a great sin, equivalent to regicide. It struck me that this queen was very delicate, and that shed be happier among the green and delicate wheat than in some other grey place. My greatest hope was that shed maybe find another regiment of bees whose queen had died, or who had no queen, and that she could become their queen, and revive a devastated dynasty. To this day, I sort of suspect that the words of my poems and songs are those bees whose golden queen was let loose and lost in this green field of poetry and beauty. Ive always wandered in search of this golden queen. And my fairy companion has told me that she has seen

this queen. Ive taken hold of the skirt-hem of my imagination and my poetrys fairy-spirit, and shes led me through countless islands of beauty and imagination, but I still havent caught up with her yet. After every journey, the fairy gives me a hearty laugh, and invites me on another quest. Sometimes I would have my doubtswhat if that queen isnt in my fairy companions palm? If, God willing, I were able to open up her hand tomorrow, maybe I would find that queen, and set up a little kingdom for myself. With love, Karwan.

1. To the Poet, a Letter from the Wilderness

Greeting, my dear Karwan, greetings Tell me, my friend, have you forgotten me And my burnt, sooty moments? My weary, exhausted camel-driver friend! You're not coming for me, you thoughtless one; but I'm coming after you I hear the jangle of your camel's bells I hear that ghazal, with the hue of blood, Which you dedicated to that martyred shepherd. These days you aren't writing joyous songs I realize your pen's nib is broken Amidst these blue stars, your little poet's heart Is breaking on the crescent moon's black peak Since your blistered, cracked feet were red with blood Today my north wind kissed that mountain grass May your cup of wine never be emptied Come; all my soma has blossomed for you! The golden-petalled honeybees are coming; Your poem-letters, wandering here and there With the cages of your phrases shattered, The mountain birds are wandering all over I've got some infidel songs for you; Come on, turn a few of them Muslim Some of them could become queens for you; Some of them, maids and servants

I realize you're very empty-handed these days The poetry-fish is slipping through your fingers Enough thirst hasnt yet awakened in your heart For the Lord's wine-cup to move across your lips When I lay my head to sleep, I dream of you; You're wandering through the cemetery of Nasir Bagh refugee camp You're like a bouquet of tulips You're wandering across my heart's scar tissue I even realize how they've sniped at you Critics have paid you little mind May the rose of your poet's heart not wilt from upset; I've seen the red dewdrops of your tears Your eyes are filled with the color of your heart You don't speak; you look for songs You watch high and low, like a white hawk, For poetry-doves to seize in your talons Come; come by night, and I'll make a poet of you, If there are silent moments in the chalice of the full moon Whisper a coo coo in the moon-dove's ear When you remember childhood moments Like God's holy green book Underneath a canopy of white moonbeams By God, if youd look at my green forest now, Im canopied with the stars in the moonlight I'm bathing in the perfume of green sandalwood I'm lying here in the night like a green serpent.

No, no; the moon is standing above my head; I'm lying surrounded by a garland of stars And above those brilliant white stars Embedded in your tawny camel's blankets; Beyond them, my hand is parting the pines Never before penetrated by moonlight At dawn, just like a golden boat, my sun Is gliding across the river of my green embrace The contented spirit of this martyred poet Is wandering through the ayat of Ya Sin Just like Stinger missiles, brutish falcons Are seizing the wings and necks of Churning-winged mountain doves Like soft, delicate airplanes. And that platoon of flowers, standing tall Which were blasted by the Russian pilot-Youd think the martyrs rose again And took the form of sulfur-smoke yellow flowers once again A young shepherd is adeptly climbing up to them And lovingly bringing back bouquets Hes kissing their wounds with dry lips Hes bringing a gift for his sister, a young bride In salutation to my wet oaks, sandalwoods, My violet-bushes, green from the rains No one can pinpoint the limits of my beauty I am simply a formless, boundless beauty

Do you remember those greenish pines When the rockets plunged deep inside their heart? Whose white breast was looted and broken, Into whose boughs was plunged a red-hot spike? Now those branches, recovered from that wound, Scatter clove-scent as the morning breeze blows through them And if the north wind should flirt with them, Then it scatters the jangling of green bangles At night a nightingale sits on this branch Remembering the melodies of the Psalms Creating an apocalypse with its burnt voice Youd think it was recollecting the secrets of Mt. Sinai It gives out a Bilali cry at the white dawn As it recites the Quran in a sweet tongue And all the universe resounds with applause As it recites the verse of al-Rahman in melody Come here; take hold of my skirt-hem Ill give you as much love as you could possibly want See, its lines will be like the wandering of peacocks When I put some green blood in your white poem If you need epic-ness; if you need awe Ive got the wild eyes of a clouded leopard And for the delicacy of gentle grace, Look; Ive got the timidity of a does eyes When I spread my north wind through the willows You will forget the scent of your beloveds tresses Youll swing the sledgehammer of your imagination

Youll break and forget these idols of stone Ill bring you a spirit, O poet, In the form of a lost Eden of fairies Ill weave for you the golden threads of the sun In the form of nomad-tents filled with songs If you kiss the fairy-spirit of music Come here; take a few steps ahead of yourself You hear the sound of green bangles, dont you? Theyre shouting out naras for you, Karwan! Ill show you such islands of beauty That even a poet-man couldnt imagine In the heart of just one of your Pashto tappas exists Something not present in the burlap sack of any other language Come; let me take you on flights to distant places That you might be able to unfurl your wings in the sunrise Your lungs will inhale the breath of beauty The imprint of your art will be left Come here; Ill make a poet out of you Bright stars are wandering through the blue water Youll lift them up in the golden afternoon light When all of your poem-letters begin to wander Send me a letter; itll arrive at once! Yes; itll arrive carried by a dove of inspiration If the hawks dont plunder it; send me an answer With a dove of green Bagram I offer my loving praises to the lovers of your tradition

My apron-pocket is full of green prayers and well-wishes I accept that the tradition will become one of candles My rucksack is also full of martyrs The lovers and the sages of the tradition Will raise the banner of a Sufistic society Which brought forth the ecstatic likes of Mansur Theyll raise a banner in the name of his wine-cup Look- have you forgotten me? Youve forgotten many things Im saying that you should come one more time On all the ancient bridges lying around you My dear Karwan, youll definitely come once again!

Wait up for me a little, traveler!

--------------My martyred friend's checkered scarf Is tied around my waist I've come, just a second earlier, From the heavy, great war The mouths of the cliffs echo Filled with the crashing of swords In my saddlebag, I've brought The head of that dragon Which plucked that orphan like a fruit Off the branch of happiness --------------The straps of my sandals are sliced up; My feet are full of thorns In my breast I've brought with me Broken-off lance heads My caravan's camels are exhausted I've brought back my martyrs on them My torches in the night Are these reed mats, glowing red with blood. --------------Whats wrong with these two ears of yours? Why aren't you listening to this song of mine? Can't you see I'm following you? I'm kissing the dust of your feet You've had your fill of men's funeral banquets While I, with my snow-white heart

Have drank cup after cup Of black antimony, worrying about my beloved. All of this is about my dear friends Who have now been turned to statues --------------It's not like I just came for the hell of it With plenty of time stashed in my pocket Just wait up for me a little, traveler I've got stories stashed in my pocket I've barbed every shout of mine With the scorpion-sting of sobbing. Instead of water, I have drunk From the flask of my filled-up little heart Every scar closes it up a little more But my heart is so full of love Slay it with conscience's sword If there's any doubt about it --------------One evening a friend of mine came With my heart in his hand I don't know know whether it was of love or of vengefulness, But he came with a knife in his hand also He said, this heart of yours is good for nothing Go find a new heart from somewhere All your half-baked songsFind them a tender heart somewhere One which feeds on love songs Go find the kind of heart Which steals kisses from the stars Go find a heart which worships the sun.

--------------I said, Oh sure! As if hearts Can be bought four to a rupee; As if, in the marketplace which is your two eyes You can pick out just anyone at all to love. Ill pay in full with the cash of my sorrows If songs are what sells on credit I'll buy a forceful ghazal If ghazals can be had through force Ill just sacrifice this sobbing of mine If music and revelry is what sells --------------This set loose the pigeon of my heart Then my friend zoomed past me like a hawk That one, whom I had loved from way back when Left in a very new sort of way My heart fell off the edge of a cliff Oh! it broke, and went silent This gemstone split up into fragments. Could be its well and truly useless now. Thirsty for the eyes of its beloved, It went off on a path through the wild unirrigated country. These four planets orbiting two circling suns Left their colorful, sensuous mutual orbit. --------------Traveler, that night I cried out to God so much! But on that day I didn't Cry nearly as much as I have today That was the very same day; Perhaps you've forgotten,

You were a child, if you remember; Much time has passed; When that platoon showed up In our village; that troop of young-men Red-lipped beautiful youths With lion-whiskers and wild locks And black, penetrating eyes like gwargwaras And halfway maroon like the kirkan Intoxicated from their cries of the takbir From drums and atan dancing; Do you remember those six young-men? Whose clapping grew hot and fast Who whipped their turban-tails around Who slicked back their long hair When they gave off those clipped cries, When they drew out the final syllables of their tappas, With a single tappa for a martyr They moistened the whole world's eyes! Those ones who were all saying, God! You have put out the eyes of death itself! Who, with their hashish pipe Turned their own eyes red and bloodshot. They were sitting next to the spring On the bank of the spring there was a poplar In the poplar sat a turtle-dove Cooing again and again. My tawny camel was following behind me, Its bells jangling. They all lifted their eyes up at me, And inside them sat a city of love. Within the heart of that city There was a caravan loaded with tappas And the clothes on that crowd of strangers

Were woven out of sacrifice and lamentation. But right to its pillaged heart went A sorrowful strain of sitars. And around this city of love A great serpent encircled itself. Those six young-men came out, Hunting this dragon. --------------Hey! What are you doing, falling asleep? Traveler, wake up! The story goes in another direction Calm down, oh strong one. I'll straighten out a little onto the path And you do the same. Here; there's some sugar in my pocket Sweeten your mouth a little Help take a little of the story's heavy load Onto your own shoulders That way, we'll shorten the path Of this story, which got long and carried away. Are you a tired-out child, That you're getting impatient? The story has to be set up before it can emerge! Your heart's become nothing more than a wooden nickel. In the middle of this story There are many deserts, mountains, crags, Arrows ripped from chests, And arms chopped off by swords It's very reckless, Fighting with dragons. In the middle part, houses turn into cemeteries Emptying out filled beds.

We'll leave aside this middle part of the story By God, it gets really bitter... So anyway, it's hardly even twilight; Not yet fully night Droplets of the dragon's venom Will form themselves out of white stars And you'll see its teeth Made from some other stars All the wounds of the young-men Will form themselves out of golden stars You'll see all these stars Fighting with each other Some will flee from their orbit Some will fall to earth They'll smash on the cliffs They'll fall into the springs And there, inside the two halves of their husks, As their kernels swell up, life will emerge. --------------Don't be afraid in the middle of the story I'm just coming to the end now Your dog is barking; drive it away I'm coming to the story's destination I'll just get the story moving, Then I'll come to the true point of it. You were a child, O traveler The weather-hardy camels walked in a line Their necks curving, Their bells jangling There was a bale of wheat, And another load, of arrows. If only we weren't subject to the hell of hunger

But this trade in arrows was a good living; We were there for hunting, nothing else. Hunting what, you'd ask? The grand dragon of lore. You were there too, sitting on a bale Chewing on a sugar cane When the camel stretched its neck toward you, You'd give it a slap with it Then, in the sky, an airplane Unexpectedly roared into the area Sounding almost as if, struggling under its load, A wounded she-camel had collapsed Bringing forth a bomb-child, That pregnant camel gave birth The bomb fell onto a mountain peak But the satisfaction of hearing its cry was absent; Maybe the mother was malnourished Or she just miscarried. You took the sugarcane on top of your arm And held it like a rocket. And the index finger of your left hand, You bent like a trigger. You let out a laughing shout And the pilot caught a look at you. --------------He stubbornly tightened his lips, That master of iron, That one who poured bitter poison Into every one of your sugarcane's segments In the sky, his airplane Curved around in your direction He aimed his cannon

At your sugarcane and your shoulder Just before shooting, He sweetened the mouth of his gunpowder heart. Then, on that mountain, whose peaks Reached almost to the sky, Against which cloud-camels Formed and broke apart, Right at its sharp peak, Six real camels showed up. And while the pilot was confused, Their deadly eye got a sweet target. With the blink of their eyes A shot crashed into the mountain Just like a sledgehammer, it smashed One of the mountain's round boulders And a sharp sliver of granite Grabbed the hawk-plane with its beak Like a scythe in its chest Youd swear it shrieked hysterically As it turned around in the air It started zig-zagging The airplane broke up And flew right into the cliffs On its wings, monkeys Jumped around, screaming. Some particularly mischievous monkeys Pissed all over it. We also heard The roaring of the airplane. Like a bride, out of happiness Tears filled up our eyes Deep inside our hearts, Rock-sugar crystals broke apart

Traveler, do you remember When that sugarcane was on your shoulder? At that moment, that shoulder of yours Seemed even sweeter than the sugarcane We all said to you, Congratulations on your shot! God be with you; in these mountains May you go far in life! But then, unexpectedly, A state came over you Tears welled up in your eyes And a sort of awe came over you Like a poet, a rare type Of poetics came over you We told you legends; But reality came down upon you. In an instant, you lightened Your shoulder of the sugarcane's already light load And when the camel bent its neck toward you, You sweetened its mouth with it. You jumped off the bale With a purposeful sort of leap, And freed the camel's foot of its bell-chains And immediately, with a crunch of gravel, The camels in the caravan stopped and waited for you In a blink or two of the eye, Tears welled up in your eyes You let loose some broken sobs And your broken words Embedded themselves in the corpse. Your red lips, sliced up from the sugarcane Quivered like two rose petals The words expressed by your eyes

Were undulating, surging. Those six flowering trees Had seemed to metamorphose into the belly of a Leviathan But they had been able To survive that Leviathan, and it passed by. The six camels came down from up above There was just one herder going with them Six fringed shawls, and through each of them Shone a tangled shower of light rays. Through our white shining tears The boughs of an arghawan tree blossomed. And every heart wrapped up in those shawls Was the object of my love. --------------Come here, let me kiss you My beautiful traveler, The shadow of my songs! Oh you, my broken heart! These six travelers' Seventh companion is you. The provisions fueling the journey Of Karwan's ghazals and folk songs is you.