I’ve taken out my folded square of silk crepe.  The flowers woven into it are the colors of the earth… a Persian pattern.  I’ve bought it in the Grand Bazaar of Kashgar.  It never stops smelling of nutmeg. I am lost in the scent of it each time I take it out.  In this tiny place of what remains, I cover my head before peeking through the door of the mosque to see if it is permitted for me to enter.  A man is at the far end.  There are a few old men praying toward the East.  He waves me off and I turn to go… but, then, he gets up with a smile.  I’ve misunderstood his meaning and, welcomed, I step over the threshold.

The mosque is ancient and weather worn… a tattered beauty of pots of pomegranate bushes dotted with red flowers and the coolness of shady Moslem places.  He sits next to a wooden barrel of cistern water, a dopa on his head.  I make friends with his children.  He wants me to take pictures and carefully arranges us in dignified fashion before the pots of green plants and flowers.  We smile, but do not talk… only my impoverished handful of Uyghur words… this old Altai family of words that bring smiles like jewels… the words that say, “Yes” to everything because I am a guest in this dusty place. I smile and laugh… enjoy being the guest.  I am holding up a mirror for them to see how kind they are in a simple act of hospitality… this love of life they share so freely.

I ask if I can go see the graves.  Like a grand vizier of old, he makes a flourish to step through the hole that is a doorway through the locked iron gate.  I step through. It’s as if I’ve entered a gate back in time to Samarkand.  I feel the power of that timeless place that finds itself in this place.  Time… what comes… what goes… what time we have… what time we don’t… what time we throw so carelessly about.

I feel winds of change coming toward me again.  I don’t know when the change is coming, but I know something is coming as if I’ve reached the crest of the hill and will soon see just what it is.  I revel in expectation as I stand there waiting to see what lies ahead, tired today, but with a smile, for a tomorrow if it’s meant to be.  What can stop time? Not even remembering can stop time, because time passes.

 

The dust blows fierce against the skin
On the edge of the Sea of Death.
It knows no resting place.

Once there was the tinkle of bells
From a long way off,
Camels
Plodding through clouds of dust,
The arrival of silk,
Perfume
At the citadel gates,
Bustling crowds, hawkers and wild music,
Now only melon rinds thrown down in the dirt,
Kebab stands
Hand-thrown pots for sale
And someone’s courtyard.

The dead are lying there
Behind the mosque
Under the trees.
Follow the gardener
As he waters the figs,
The four o’clocks.
He will lead you to them
Through the coolness
Of the watered garden.

Walk among the dead,
Dust themselves.
They listen to your heedless heart,
Your blood, a river coursing,
To the warm fist of flesh that beats.
Mulling over you.
They love the life they have left,
Long, long ago.

In the wind there is a sound,
The clickety-clack of prayer beads
Through papery fingers.
Dry bones on sandalwood and smooth stone.
They are passing.
Praying for the living as they go,
Stopping up short the one who cares to listen.
Their decayed lips move with silent words,
Be mindful, now.  Take one more look, they say.
Your world too quickly will pass away.
It will be gone,
Exchanged for another like ours.

Write your name in the dust on your skin.
Watch it as it blows away
Again.

Far out in the desert
The wind
Lifts up your name
Into a  swirling dust devil
Rising, a pillar, toward the sapphire sky

Before, like them,
It settles in the dust again,

And, then, blows back
Where whence
It came
Before it blows
Away again.

                                                                 ~~In The Graves of the Yarkland Kings