I am reading Desire Path: Sequoia by Donika Kelly today in Poetry magazine (see below for the poem) and meditating upon the theme of the impermanence of faces.
We, as humans, are minuscule and transient. Faces that will disappear like clouds. We see them today everywhere, and tomorrow there are no where to be seen. Perhaps some will appear, like Ghalib says in his Ghazal Sab Kahaan, through beautiful flowers.
Sab kahaan kuchhh lalaa-o-gul mein numaaya ho gayeenKhaak main kyaa suratein hongi ki pinhaa ho gayeenWhere are they all, a few manifest in beautiful flowersWhat spectacular faces must have beem that the ground now hides
Our impermanence can swiftly transform our existence, making us vulnerable like something inflammable. Like Baba Farid says, don't touch the safflower, O love, it will burn. It is vulnerable and flammable.
Hath na laayi kasumbharai, jal jaasi dhola
Everything that currently possesses a distinct identity, even objects with faces, will eventually lose their individuality and merge with the vastness of the universe. Time will gradually deposit layers upon them, turning them into sediment, blending them into the fabric of eternity. This reminds me of Shams Mashraqi's Persian poem Har Lehza where he talks about find the trickster love in every face:
Har lehza ba shakl aan but-e-ayyar baraamadDil burd-o-nihaan shudHar dum ba libaas-e-digar aan yaar baraamadGah peer-o-jawaan shudO' that trickster idol-beloved! Every time he made an appearance, he had a different faceHe pulled the people's hearts, And hid from view.Every time he came out in a different garbHe was sometimes young, And sometimes he was old.
The future remains unknown, and perhaps we need to express gratitude for this lack of foresight. Or the gratitude for the foresight to see the one in all, and thereby not needing to know that everything is impermanent.
Desire Path: Sequoia
The poem is titled "Desire Path: Sequoia" to evoke the sense of longing and the connection between human desires and the majestic Sequoia tree. The term "Desire Path" suggests an unconventional route or an intuitive path created by human yearning. In this context, it represents the speaker's deep connection with nature and their vulnerability, symbolized by the Sequoia.
Desire Path: SequoiaBy Donika KellyToday I see the faces in everything:the trees across the street, the cloudsin Ansel Adams’s The Golden GateBefore the Bridge, San Francisco,California. In the picture, I’m not huggingthe sequoia; I’m showing the womanbehind the camera I am small, young,that I’ve always been vulnerableto fire, and I am smiling to know this.I am holding my arms perpendicularto the plane of my body, which is parallelto the plane of the tree, the treebetween my arms, outstretched,and in so doing I am saying to the womanbehind the camera: You too are small, young,you have always been vulnerable to fire.In taking the picture, she says: I agree.You are small. The picture is on a screenin a hotel room. The woman behind the cameraa figment of memory, her face smudged,imprecise. There is pleasure in planesgone to silt, in time (as with water, as with wind)doing its sedimentary work. Pleasurein what’s past—the feeling of the tree’srough bark, its trunk as wholebetween my arms as the Golden Gate,through either peninsula, runninginto ocean under only one horizon—pleasure in not knowing (fire, steel,grief) what’s yet to come.
Singing oneness!
