2 poem by

About the Poet

W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Structureof Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry,The Language of Birds (Finishing Line 2011), a retelling of Attar’s Conference of the Birds, and a forthcoming collection The Book of Maps. Recent honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Poetry Prize and Potomac ReviewPrize. His work has appeared in Asian Cha, Gulf Coast and Aesthetica. He is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.

…
Qalb Qasida – Saffron

Outside, small crocus bloom. The warming earth

pushes inverted, upright bells, lilac

and cream, above the soil line, until

in opening, petals reveal gold

stamens with triple forks. The blossoms fill

with threads, yellow or scarlet, curling back

upon themselves when clipped and spread to dry.

But half a dozen blossoms can’t supply

enough saffron to dye a robe, or scent

a lover’s bath. It takes entire fields

to make one ounce, and February’s cold

reduces even transitory yields.

Only a swelling bowl cures discontent

or remedies a simmering distress.

I must remind myself its best to bless

even the smallest blossom, praise the stand

of crocus growing underneath the oak

since even these few petals may enfold

some hint of something larger, may invoke

some prophecy I still don’t understand

of small circular blossoms and their worth.

Tribhanga Qasida ~ Odissi Dance

Her body, like a river-willow, bends

once at the knees, as if the paperbark

could bend and sway smoothly to human form,

and as my eyes rise up, once at the waist,

whose movements reenact a thunderstorm

when trees, their bodies transformed by the dark

rhythms of wind, weave branches through the air,

and once above her undraped shoulders, where

the pearls I presented her renew

their gift of light, in spheres reflecting all

round forms within their compass, interlaced

as triple strands, but merging. They enthrall

my eyes, distract me from the dance I knew

or had imagined separate from me:

the gems, that bark, her skin, my ecstasy,

all merge together in exquisite dance-
the lithe shape seems unbounded and becomes

her instrument, the candles she had placed

and lit transform themselves into blossoms

swaying beneath her motions, and her glance

eclipses in me all her dance transcends.