Paradise Gardens Carpet

Glasgow: Mantle of the Green Hollow

One morning,
by the exquisite scent of sweet alyssum we were drawn
from the wild peacock reeds of the cold green river
to the centre of the City of the West Wind
to a caravanserai in a wall with no gate

From behind the Wall of Thenew came the ragim creaks of water-wheels
through its cracked substance fired shafts of white light
we, the shadow people of the borders,
each from another place
peered through many fissures,
separate niches, each
saw a different garden beyond the wall,
discussed, at length decided we
the gardens must be infinite

The garden was a robe with eight sides, many levels
the sky, a dome of blue and white flowers
petals, fluttering, changing in form
rolling into one another like cloud-banks
each bagh was four, seamed by
rivers of wine, honey, water, milk
flowing through the palms of water-wheels,
quadrants dividing again and again
into yet smaller squares, each
filled with the floating forms of cypresses ringed by citrus groves:
lime, orange, lemon
lime trees formed hijaabs, shading the fragile from the light, while
pungent lemon kept away stray vermin and
mihrab orange trees led to garden rooms and plaster courts
where on eight-sided tables, antique scrolls
wrote upon themselves in Kufic script with reed quills
and seeds burst joyously from the skins of pomegranates

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Stone pavilions striped in ochre, black and terracotta sheltered beneath mulberry trees, rock and leaf shadows, reflected in the uisge of tiny lochs,
danced in the House of Joy that was the garden
scent of Damask roses, heavy
of musk sweat, camphor wood and ginger plant, we smelled
and the white baadil of jasmine turned us
into night-dancers and weeping willows and laughing children

And as we were spun into beggars, falcons and pigeons,
so were the letters on the scrolls changed
into gazelles and lions, dragons and phoenixes
and at length there was no longer any sun and moon
but only the sides of a tambourine, dancing and swaying,
bells tinkling like the sound of water through stone
And all the music of the jannat:
the birdsong, the water, the emptiness
came to one, single note: Peace

At the centre of the chahar bagh, into which all streams flowed,
lay a basin built on the backs of twelve stone bulls
and from the basin came, not water merely, but
a giant, tortuous vine with branches bowing far into the sky
meandering foliage, ladders and wings, leaves split
by wondrous caterpillars weaving shimmering silken veils

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As we shaded our eyes from the blinding noor,
we saw above the trees a gate, the shape of re-joined badams,
beyond this, a trellis bearing tiny blossoms around a giant, eight-petalled flower
four gates barring different layers of the garden
each bearing the petals of different flowers:
snowdrops, tulips, roses and gentian trumpets
On the lower branches of the vine tree, perched
two calligraphic birds and a silver fish, all gazing into
a spherical hanging glass in which burned a lamp

When we returned to our homes, everything had changed
The river, once-glaucous, flowed down from the mountains like liquid diamond,
the city had turned from frozen tomb to burning bedchamber,
rhythms of reel and iron flowed as blood through our veins
that which had enclosed the courtyard of our bodies was no longer
we were free, yet we were blind

In the centre of each house, a tall loom
across the floor, threads of many shades
we were blind yet
like worm, seed-hair and lustrous pashm,
we knew by touch and smell and taste the colour of every thread

We set to work, each on a different carpet, a separate loom
we strove to reproduce what we had seen
but wool, cotton and silk are not petals and streams and stars
our hands, human not divine, so
the beings emerging from the taut weft and weave
had not life, breath, words, but were merely simulacra
as music is to the whisper of the Friend’s breath

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We were stone blind, had no pattern,
only our memories, and the memories of those who had gone before
for this work spanned many generations, the pain of countless partings,
it moved with us
across darya, desert, moss and law

We wove herbaceous borders of irises, lilies and bluebells
planted polygons of tulips, hyacinths, guls
beneath the tips of our fingers, palm fronds became
vine leaves and lotus blossoms
fissures and tolls in stone opened
into window-frames and ladders and the kairi of ancient mango trees
the dun splendours of the city which we could never have had,
strutted and moaned as peacocks
ancient scrolls, which we could never have read,
we wrote as filigree silver and gold
dark places, into which by a thousand armies we were cast,
we fashioned as wild asses,
wings upon which we were denied flight,
we grew as almonds
Beinn Kaaf, up whose steep, horn sides we clambered,
the skin of our hands tearing from the bone,
we dreamed as a black pyramid
The Loved One, as a gazelle.

When the slowest carpet was finished,
the last trump fashioned,
the final hole cut in the shehnai reed of the unseen farishta,
we found that we did not know how to tie the end knot
left in that state, the carpets soon would unravel, their paths,
become lost in the furze and brash and musk of the green hollow
so we hauled the rugs into the courtyard by the unknown river
upon our hunched shoulders one, great loom
and using this frame, with our fingertips we sewed the ends of each carpet to
the beginnings of another,
so that the whole became one, great carpet with neither beginning nor end

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And then we moved our homes to the rug,
and sat and lived and swam upon it as upon dark water,
and like the words on the scrolls in the pavilions,
it grew within us, and so
we began the weaving of an endless carpet, one
which can be added to by every guest who passes through our homes,
each traveller may leave their mark,
their vision of the gardens, become heart,
upon the green earth of our place
until eventually
the carpet will spread out and cover
the mountains, the lochs, the world
Our pain is turned to laughter, our blindness to light

Edinburgh: The Calligraphies of the Mirror

By the light of the windy, rising sun, we sailed up the slow-moving fjjordr
and came upon the face of a hill and a cluster of houses
Disembarking, with our laughing children, we let loose our ships and watched
as they vanished like swords over the horizon into the burning fire of the east

But the town, old and new, was deserted, the flanks of its buildings,
cold stone mute
carrying only our bones and the threads of our sinews,
we tramped over muir and burn and through raivels of dying reeds
until we came to the medina of the city,
drawn in the form of a rectangle open to the sky
and there, young and old Mothers of the Voyage, we sat down

The wind swooped from the north-east like a giant albatross
our limbs grew cold and blue, our faces, turned toward the face of the hill,
moved slowly upon the granite earth
we heard only shadow music, for we were the Mothers of the Vanished,
we had lost everything

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Then the sun rose to the nuun point,
into the dark blue sky shadows fled
we rose from the ground and with our bones for tools,
we hewed rock from the buildings, pink and grey,
from the cold walls of the community centres,
and we mounted these stones into an arch

And from this mihrab, from this centre, in strict and perfect geometer,
we began to spin the silken threads of our sinews into rivers, trees, flowers
as we worked, day and night and day, we talked and danced and sang,
our laughing scissors cut templates of a new aesthetic,
raised tufts of a thousand layers
drew sentences rising and falling and changing
like the waves of the northern sea from whence we had come

At the heart of our ferdaus was a great tree, from which
in threads of silver and gold wound around silk like runs of notes around a stave,
there flowed four rivers
at its end, each river sank into four mihrabs
and along the length of each stream
fluttered butterflies with wings of many different colours

With bloodied hands, we drew reeds from the earth
spun the flax from their heads into maqam patterns which repeated,
one layer upon the next,
to a hundred, a thousand,
to the unknowable,
differing each by only the breadth of a butterfly’s wing

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In this way, we carved our paridaeza into the air and stone of the fjjodr city,
each petal, one deed, transfigured
a northern forest of columns, of pine and spruce and falcon nests,
of clearings along the way where
blooded roses and piteous carnation beggars prostrate themselves,
of earth tachts above sunken streams
where the dark, scented bells of hyacinths ring and weep, aiai!,
and where tulips martyr their slender necks,
not for monotonous uniformity or the empty, lying graves of war
but for harmonious balance, for symmetry of word, mind, action,
for the unity of ishq and liberty
Breath, peace

Hands henna’d with soil,
we began at the centre-point and wove outward in harmonic geometer,
the forms of fish, insects, sea eyes
and as we wove beneath the cold moon, we heard,
coming from the upper branches of our tree,
the sound of unseen, bagpipe’d farishtas
playing the dialectical songs of our voyage, of our progress,
writing our names in the weave in a script which could be read
only by dying nightingales

From the garden pavilions of palaces to the earth mohallas of beggars,
from the Court of the Archives to the golden drawing-rooms of the saints,
we carved cedar columns, tile mosaics and moulded stucco,
grew dates and pomegranates,
cut inscriptions in steel globes
in the shapes of spiralling vines and birds of light

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Along vertical levels, we raised transparent curtains of water,
through which, at certain times of day,
it was possible to see the shapes of distant cypresses
hijaabs of the soul; freedom of the mind and body

At the four points, we opened seven gateways, weft and weave,
each one deeper than the next,
and amidst summer meadows of violets,
beneath each we planted a treasury of secrets

And at the centre of the forest, was a pool covered with water lilies
into which everything flowed
and in whose depths, everything changed
in the surface of the water, a walnut tree, a spherical yew,
on an island in the middle of the lake
approached by four, vine-draped pergolas
a square pavilion with eight-sided minarets of white marble
roved by jasmine and mallow and myrtle,
with heavy, cedarwood doors guarded by stone turtles and singing amphorae,
the pavilion was the tomb of the lost symmetries,
through its black, foursquare, wrought-iron windows
shone a great white light, flowed
rivers of silk, blown on a pine wind
out through the forest to the lanterns and towers of the city beyond
up into the sky, to the diamond stars

At last, we were finished,
we stood back, admired our work
in our garden, our carpet, we had gathered together
the True, the Good and the Beautiful, through these
we sought the idea, drew
the world into our arms, turned it
into a book

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To feel one’s feet upon the carpet,
to stride through the garden among the silent, singing Friends,
is to walk through the poems of that book
better still, to bend down beneath the shadows of scholartrees
to grab from the stream a cup of wine, to drink,
to compose a poem in the flower mirror

Yet still, it remains a transient, shimmering residence
of fragrant islets and water pergolas,
of cloud walls and pomegranate windows…

This is just the beginning, the first station,
to become that bird which is so free
it can carry the tiniest petal out into the limitless universe
can be the work only of the One

Glossary

Most of the words are from Farsi or Urdu, except where otherwise indicated.

aiai hyacinth (Greek)
baadil clouds
badam almond
bagh garden
Beinn Mount (Scots Gaelic)
caravanserai resting-place for caravans
chahar four
darya river
farishta angel
ferdaus Paradise/garden (Farsi/Urdu)
fjjordr firth, an long inlet of the sea (Old Norse)
guls roses
henna brownish dye for hair or skin
hijaabs veils; head-coverings
ishq spiritual love
jannat garden; Paradise (Arabic)
kairi seeds ( of the mango)
Kaaf letter of Arabic alphabet symbolising The Clear Book, sublime truth, the Word, the hidden treasure, alchemical changes; also a mythical mountain on the path of enlightenment
Kufic angular form of Arabic script, long obsolete in manuscripts/ books, but still used on architecture
maqam unit in Arabic music; basic style of a piece
mihrab prayer niche in the wall of (especially) a mosque
muir moor (Scots)
mohallas alleyways
nuun letter of Arabic alphabet, signifying prophecy, nobility, breath; concise knowledge in the presence of Oneness
noor light
Paridaeza Paradise (Old Farsi)
pashm soft, smooth underfur (e.g. in cashmere); wool ragim as pertaining to a raag, a unit of North Indian music
raivels tangles (Scots)
shehnai flute
tachts thrones
Thenew St Thenew was the mother of St. Kentigern/Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow
tolls holes (Scots)
uisge water (Scots Gaelic)
wahdat spiritual unity (Arabic)

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