The Season

SIRHAN OFTEN PRODUCED his old sitar after the day’s work was done and they had returned to the river’s banks to eat their nightly bread. It was a damaged relic of a distant ancestor who had lived an easier life. The young builder held on to some hope that his own would someday fall into such a blissful trance, long afternoons spent doing nothing but singing and chasing women. Amal thought this was unlikely but enjoyed their nightly ritual too much to throw salt into a tender wound. 

Tonight, he sang of a woman he had never met. He strummed along to the words haphazardly. The worn-out strings complimented his lackadaisical voice.

I came upon her love one day,

before the leaves from green to grey—

when clouds that wept incessant tears

would otherwise have taken charge.

We walked and I asked for her song,

and so, she told as in response,

of winter snows and quiet woes,

and still of hopes that spring could bring.

Beyond the twinkle of her eye,

beyond the avaricious smile—

above the sky that seeks her warmth,

below the earth that holds her dear.

The hatching of an egg is you,

the budding of an eager stalk—

the flower in its greatest bloom,

a passing star that left her mark.

Beside the deepness of my seas,

beside these dreams that tear at me—

above the light of her good graces,

below me lights of distant places.

“Very nice.” Amal lit the leaves in his pipe and inhaled sharply. “What’s her story?”

“No story,” Sirhan replied as he was handed the pipe. He coughed, then looked up at the stars.

“She was up there, as I happened to be crossing the river.”

Amal sat back, content. He warmed his hands over the small fire they had put together.

“You should have been a poet, dear friend,” he said. “If only you had been born fairer, perhaps they would have taken you for a celestial, not one to be sat working on the eternal. But you are quite the infinite well yourself.”

Sirhan smiled. “I’m the labour that draws from the well what it can, that is poetry enough.”

They sat for a while, sending trails of smoke curling into the night. In the past, they had watched their elders do so. Tonight, they sat alone.

“I’m curious. When you passed her, was she like summer, sweet and long, or short, and temper like spring?” Amal asked.

Sirhan placed the instrument on his lap and found a light rhythm to tap.

“No. She was a soft autumn storm,” he said after a while. “A reminder of winter, of what is to come, to be overcome, with one’s heart and mind set on the warmest days.”

“Yet you speak so fondly of her.”

“Hers is a dying world.” He paused to send a wheel of smoke up and watched as it slowly bled and dissolved. “I have compassion.”

“How noble.”

“If I had it my way, we should all be so noble.”

Amal chuckled. He held up his hands, pointed at the stars.

“And who would taste the changing temperaments then, if all we did was watch the fading leaves?” Sirhan emptied the pipe into the fire and spat out into the dark. He turned back to Amal and gestured with the empty pipe, drawing a line from the stars down to the flame in their midst.

“Amal, you know as well as I, it is safer to warm oneself by the kindly fire than be caught in its twisting rage.”

They sat for a little while longer, silently waiting for the last embers to capitulate. Occasionally, the poet would murmur a phrase to himself and try hard to remember it after. Mostly, they evaded him. Once in a while though, he lined the words up in the correct order and spoke them again in a triumphant whisper.

My mind be the coming of winter,

My heart be the coming of spring,

And though I be autumn, the chill, and the shake,

I know I be summer someday.