Remember, love, our first
discussion was on beauty?
We’d talk and later write
after chasmal days and dreams,
with cosmic care embroider
the fabric of intuition.

We’ve charmed the vaguest, starkest
demons of our own and other lives
with tulips and carnations,
brought them to the light of wonder,
to the lamp of lucidity
which consumes manna and mire

to feed its flame of bridled fervor
and glow more tenderly,
as if to say, “Go on, friends, embrace
the flux and flood, the ebb and wane,
the cold and green, the pale and new,
and keep me trancing warmly in your qualms.”

—
Taimur Khan