Hessom Razavi - Shabnam Nightwish

‘You can bury them deep under, sir; you can bind them in tunnels, … but in the end where a river has been, a river will always be.’
'Thrones, Dominations’, Sayers and Walsh

              was not the Pashtun lur
with sea green eyes on the cover of
National Geographic, walking back into Tora Bora,
caves of illiteracy, tunnels of childbirth,
certainty in a plum coloured burqa.

she was not the Iranian khahar leaning on a
street-side maple tree, marked from a rooftop
to leave herself in little red trickles on a
shaky hand-held film strewn to millions.

not the somali gabar in a Dadaab tent with
litter for toys, mouthing a canister nozzle as
a teething ring, innocent to how hopes are sung
in tongues to pin-prick moonrise.

Shabnam Nightwish, the jinn,
truant, cryptic and near in all these

women like subterranean rivers, latent and
drip-soaking the roots of sires and tectonic
plates, sunless seas of mothers and wives ferried
in caverns under sail of kismet or false ballot,

lagoons of womankind inverted and
weeping up to nourish others, invisible
till visited by Shabnam, night-sung to merge
in culverts, protected to learn and stream

up sinkholes of knowing, reclaim their wombs
and settle on work like shabnam, cut furrows in
slanted fields of lore, sluice tradition from
baked clods to amaryllis flowers, take possession

and reach daylight, a liberty of sea green
whirling like smokeless fires.

Best Australian Poems 2016

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