On being asked why do I have butterflies tattooed on my arm, I hesitate, fumble, I hear myself quoting Darwish, “The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.”

In that poem “To a Young Poet” he writes:

“Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?

You know who your mother is.

As for your father, be your own.”

(To read more of this poem: click here)

I am slowly beginning to understand why Sami carried that tattered book of Hafiz with her.  Words can explain, express, elucidate, however, are we listening? We hear the sounds, the texture of tones but do we really strain and stretch our hearts to understand their expanse of meaning. In poetry I seek the spaces, the area of white between the hyphens, is the hyphen sticking to the letters or is there space to pack in the unsaid, what did the poet not write, the unsaid is as imperative as the said, what is the disjointed in the ghazal, what was the connect that the poet avoided and why? In that, I think, I will (like Sami) find my answers.