for Safoura Ashtiany
The miniaturists of Mughal India, the carpet makers of Tabriz, and the silversmiths of Turkey, always put a single deliberate flaw into their work. A perfect artifact is considered an insult to God. Perfection is God’s work. In the best carpets there is always a mismatched thread; in the best paintings, there is always a line out of place. Perhaps the brokenness of the world, which is our own brokenness, originates from our stubborn insistence on the ideal of perfection. Living with integrity doesn’t mean you never make mistakes.
The ground is already dry and dusty
in the pasture where I walk with the dog.
The branches of the ribbon wood trees
and oaks
are damaged from too much grazing,
too many cows.
The native bunch grass will be replaced
year by year
by annuals and wild mustard.
Someone has left an empty beer can.
the world is not broken
the world is not broken
Centuries later
the silver platter
imperfectly round
continues to arrive at it’s own shining destination,
like an earth in patterned circles moving around its patterned sun
beyond good or bad
perfect or otherwise, moving and
it is done
it is true
The fragile hour-glass of the sky
its invisible blood
its fractured upper layers.
It’s hard to believe that this is not deliberate—
the poisoning of children
the silencing of forests
the encroaching sands
the oration on the radio.
I listen to someone insisting
there is no population
problem. All that open space
when you fly
across the country!
We need more people
to help the country grow!
I am not bitter
I want to say
that in the mismatched thread
the crooked line
in the disembodiment
of the imagination
there is a perfection of another sort
I walk with eyes closed
through steep canyons
Someone called this ‘ God’s Country.’
I am not bitter
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