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.
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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.