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featured poet – Mimi Khalvati

The Soul Travels on Horseback

and the road is beset with obstacles and thorns.
But let it take its time for I have hours and hours to wait
 
here, snowbound in Lisbon, glad of this sunlit café
outside Departures, for an evening flight to Heathrow.
 
Being my soul’s steed, I should like to know its name
and breed – a Marwari of India, Barb of North Africa,
 
the Akhal-Teke of Western Asia or a Turkoman,
now extinct? Is it the burnt chestnut colour of the ant,
 
grey as a Bedouin wind, the four winds that made it?
O Drinker of the Wind, I travel by air, sea, land
 
and wherever I am, there you are behind my back
pounding the cloud streets, trailing banners of cirrus
 
or as Platero once did, from fear or chill, hoofing a stream,
breaking the moon into a swarm of clear, crystal roses.
 
No, no matter your thirst, ride swiftly, mare, stallion,
mother, father, for without you I feel forever homesick.
 

Mimi Khalvati

in collection The Weather Wheel, 2014, Carcanet,
ISBN 978-1-8477725-8-9

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