QUOTE : Everything means something to you; dying flowers, The different times of year. The new clothes you wear at the end of Ramadan. A prince’s trust. The way that water flows, Too impetuous to pause, breaking over Stones, rushing towards distant objects, Places you can’t see but which you also flow Outward to. Today you slept long. When you woke your old blood stirred. This too meant something. The girl who woke you Touched your brow. She called you Lord. You smiled, Put up a trembling hand. But she had gone, As seasons go, as a night-flower closes in the day, As a hawk flies into the sun or as the cheetah runs; as The deer pauses, sun-dappled in long grass, But does not stay. Fleeting moments: these are held a long time in the eye, The blind eye of the ageing poet, So that even you, Gaffur, can imagine In this darkening landscape The bowman lovingly choosing his arrow, The hawk outpacing the cheetah, (The fountain splashing lazily in the courtyard), The girl running with the deer.