The Café

It’s a long way to the caravan serai
  so you stop in at a small café
  along the starry road to astonishment.
You tie your camel and step inside …

The sudden fragrance of rose
  seizes you with bittersweet nostalgia.
Just a handful of dusty travelers here –
  Two drunks and a poet at first glance.

They greet you with a smile
  and a nod that says,
  “We know what you’ve been through
  to get this far …”
then they sip wine that glows in the glass
  and makes their eyes shine with luminous silence that says,
  “We’ve already been where you’re going.”

Somewhere in the back room
a lone dervish whirls round and round
to misty music pouring down
from a secret sky.

You smile and pull up a chair –
  A jovial bartender sets your glass.
And the poet fills it to the brim
  with words from a wine bottle
  he keeps hidden in his shirt.

He knows you’re thirsty
  for words that speak to your ecstasy,
for words that intoxicate
  your loneliness
  and leave you forever lost
  to the world you once loved.

He knows the exact place
  on this journey
  where you threw away the schoolbooks
  you had on your back.
There’s a huge pile of schoolbooks there
  left by each traveller
  who stopped trying to make love
  by the book of arithmetic
  and began to travel light.

Oh, this poet knows
  the kind of words you need to hear
  by the time you arrive at this café!
Words that make your gaze distant
  and wet with remembrance
  of the Lover you left behind
  so long long ago
  and who waits for you still
  at the end of this starry starry road …