interlude

Amazon rainforest, Suriname – February 2026

Srinagar, Kashmir – January 2026

We shall meet again, in Srinagar,
by the gates of the Villa of Peace,
our hands blossoming into fists
till the soldiers return the keys and disappear. Again we’ll enter our last world, the first that vanished

in our absence from the broken city.
We’ll tear our shirts for tourniquets and bind the open thorns, warm the ivy
into roses. Quick, by the pomegranate— the bird will say—Humankind can bear
everything. No need to stop the ear

to stories rumored in branches: We’ll hear our gardener’s voice, the way we did as children, clear under trees he’d planted: “It’s true, my death, at the mosque entrance, in the massacre, when the Call to Prayer opened the floodgates”—Quick, follow the silence—

“and dawn rushed into everyone’s eyes.”
Will we follow the horned lark, pry open the back gate into the poplar groves,
go past the search post into the cemetery,
the dust still uneasy on hurried graves with no names, like all new ones in the city?

“It’s true” (we’ll hear our gardener again). “That bird is silent all winter. Its voice returns in spring, a plaintive cry.
That’s when it saw the mountain falcon
rip open, in mid-air, the blue magpie,
then carry it, limp from the talons.”

Pluck the blood: My words will echo thus
at sunset, by the ivy, but to what purpose?
In the drawer of the cedar stand, white in the verandah, we’ll find letters:
When the post offices died, the mailman
knew we’d return to answer them. Better

if he’d let them speed to death, blacked out by Autumn’s Press Trust not like this, taking away our breath, holding it with love’s anonymous scripts: “See how your world has cracked. Why aren’t you here? Where are you? Come back.

Is history deaf there, across the oceans?” Quick, the bird will say. And we’ll try the keys, with the first one open the door into the drawing room. Mirror after mirror,
textiled by dust, will blind us to our return as we light oil lamps. The glass map of our country,

still on the wall, will tear us to lace— We’ll go past our ancestors, up the staircase, holding their wills against our hearts. Their wish was we return—forever!—and inherit(Quick, the bird will say) that to which we belong, not like this— to get news of our death after the world’s.

— Agha Shahid Ali

Nagarkot, Nepal – December 2025

Some people – that means not everyone. Not even most of them, only a few. Not counting school, where you have to, and poets themselves, you might end up with something like two per thousand.

Like – but then, you can like chicken noodle soup, or compliments, or the color blue, your old scarf, your own way, petting the dog.

Poetry – but what is poetry anyway? More than one rickety answer has tumbled since that question first was raised. But I just keep on not knowing, and I cling to that like a redemptive handrail.

— Wisława Szymborska

San Diego, USA – December 2025

“…To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

— Arundhati Roy

Barcelona, Spain – October 2025

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine painting, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Grammos, Greece – July 2025

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

— Mary Oliver

Lunteren, Netherlands – February 2025

Gratitude is an acknowledgment of our insignificance, of our utter lack of control, of the ever looming uncertainty - against which we throw up our hands in surrender and guard whatever little comes our way with a visceral appreciation. It is a deeply felt understanding we arrive at, that nothing is promised and everything can be taken away in the blink of an eye. It is the lens through which we reconcile the unpredictability of life. It is an antidote to the arrogance of entitlement. Gratitude is not merely a feeling but an act of grounding ourselves: cherishing the little things that give us joy, and letting go of what we cannot have with grace instead of bitterness.