The Persian Grocer

July in Toronto is a day drawn long,

Giddy with the swelter strolls the sluggish throng;

In a land of Winter, the fleeting heat

Is a bewildering and exotic treat.

The sun – does it put pedestrians’ minds

On adventurous tastes from foreign climes?

Or do the blogs and journos’ foodie tales

Bring in the bodies, ring up the sales?

On statisticians don’t waste your query;

Better to ask Rostam Esfandiari.

Up on Yonge Street, not far from Finch Station,

An old strip mall is your destination.

The parking lot’s broad and plenty spacious,

His shop, though small, is strangely capacious.

Beneath a sign, writ in languages two,

Through the glass-pane door, you’ll head into

The domain of the town’s top bazaari –

So, at least, says Rostam Esfandiari.

The shelves and racks – close-stacked – form avenues

To which your gaze can’t help but pay its dues;

Like checkerboard crop-fields, glimpsed far below,

Guiding nose and eye like a river’s flow,

Bags and jars, serried bins of rich-toned woods:

A display enchanting as the retailed goods.

His patrons ask if they ever left home:

Pistachios piled like a palace dome;

Raisins, almonds, and white-baked pumpkin seeds;

Gaz, saffron and halva for festive needs,

Cheeses of the quince, as well as the cow,

And pastries that paint sweat on the ‘keto’-mad brow.

Barbari and sangak in skateboard loaves,

In bottles, olives, of a thousand groves.

At this middle-noon hour, business slows;

Old Rostam, he shrugs: “That’s just how it goes.”

Slowly, slowly, the sun reddens and shrinks;

He strokes his moustache, and, idle, thinks

Of the half-recreated Far Away

That floats in perpetual Yesterday

And makes him, wondering, rub his shiny pate

As he ponders the whims of fickle Fate.

With nothing he arrived, when came the fall

Of he whose photo stares stern from the wall.

Confused and fearful was that midnight ride;

They lost wealth and status – but kept their pride.

Oh Cyrus! Sage King, who succoured those wandering in the wild,

Do you weep for your heirs, now forty years exiled?

With necessity’s wit and full measure of grit,

He and his wife won the place where they sit

In comfort enough to buy their son a Bimmer

And fund him to voyage on adventure

To see all that’s grand in Nature and Art,

As well to understand his father’s heart.

Their daughter – he knows not what she’ll be,

But she’ll be it better with a PhD.

A television playing, hung up high,

He watches the news and heaves out a sigh:

What’s this? His Homeland is on the program;

Feelings like water pressing at a dam:

Some sort of protest or grand gathering

That sets memories – bittersweet – tingling;

Faces – like his, when young – hardened with hope

Such that truncheons and teargas strain to cope;

Girls with green scarves flaunt their hair flowing bare,

Steely students for freedom – o’er life – care.

Alas, no more leisure for daytime dreams:

Work and school done, keen shoppers inward stream.

They pick and poke and squeeze and smile:

“Yelp-recommended”…”Haven’t had this in a while…”

Maryam and Soraya on their weekly round,

A gaggle of students, come from downtown,

Whose questions and critiques often are silly,

But the scoops in the bins scuffle busy.

Sometimes when he hears an inane discourse,

He must restrain his tongue with no mean force;

What can such folk ken of his fair country

Who learn it from docs on the BBC?

Breathing deep, in time’s wisdom finds his calm –

Sharing with sympathy: soul-soothing balm.

Thinks Rostam with a smile, his cheeks aglow,

“The more they’ll love, if more they know!

* * *

The Artist

She came from a village small,

Sepulchral mills and bingo hall;

Where Blackrobes traded beaver pelts

And bruins feast on running smelts

By ruins of idle industry;

Where frowning, peeling clapboard homes

Harbour mould’ring and unspoken tomes

And the remnants of a beaten race;

A listless, best-forgotten place.

Zeal and gumption she did not lack,

Though belt-clasp had scarred her naked back;

South on the Greyhound,

Wings unbound,

To the edge of waters half-Lake and half-Sea,

To seek her own Futurity.

The Queen’s Park worthies a hand did lend

Ancestral imprudence a chance to mend;

A prestigious academy;

The first of all her family

Whose lurking shades even Facebook friends can never see.

She found a home beneath the Tower,

Gable, dormer, shaggy linden bower;

Painted brick, fanlights and a silver birch,

Herein she made her laic church,

And was blessed with an Identity.

Condos, food trucks, Chinese signs,

Bixi, Uber, streetcar lines;

Rompers, jeggings, yoga tights,

As faces flash dreamy in neon night;

Dionysian harmony.

Thick-framed specs gave artist’s vision,

Paint and protest, her newfound mission;

Profs and critics alike are wowed,

Spirit of the 6ix on canvas shroud;

Acrylic urban symphony.

Smoke’s and Hero, Mongol hotpot, gastro pubs,

GoodLife and yoga, lest she’s getting too chubs;

The housemates crowding the Gable and Bay,

NOW and X-tra there to show the way

To haunts of modish infamy.

The rent keeps growing, hikes ‘pon hikes,

The junkies keep nicking her fixxy bikes;

The gurls want to hang at such and such,

But OSAP gives her just so much;

What’s a stone-broke maiden’s remedy?

Perchance the Siren’s steaming java brew

Will perk her schooling through,

Keep awake a fighting chance

For art and drama, Instagram romance,

And stave off cruel monotony.

Soccer mom tongues, like flaming brands,

And urn-wash blasts her nimble hands;

With ramen, Goodwill and other thrifts,

She wanes wan and weak on extra shifts

And paints armour for her Dignity.

Semester done, the ground deep froze,

Straphangers wrapped in Goose-patched clothes;

A bestie’s gossip three beaus hath jaded;

By the manager each day upbraided;

Darker, longer each night’s lonely melancholy.

Snow is high, account is low,

A slick-lipped friend a way doth show,

Where one can sleep in bed the livelong day,

And making rent comes child’s play,

If she’ll lose her old temerity.

Faustian deal for a short-term pass,

Riding high on the Rail of Brass;

The speakers moan ‘My Cherry Pie,’

Limelight smooths a fish-white thigh

Tempting gross and grizzled Lechery.

Mud and ice mounds clot the yard,

The Sacred Fire sparks slow and hard;

Paint on palette getting dry and stiff,

What harm to seek a bracing whiff

Of secret powdered levity?

Rosy cheeks are draining out,

She’s stopped at the curb by the gatekeep lout;

Tramping homeward, heels in hand,

Foot-skin raw with salt and sand,

Her blood boils up a strategy.

Trembling digits weld to brush,

Liquid lips in monastic hush;

Solicitous knocking is not answered,

Social affairs are thrice deferred;

She’s blurred in her celerity.

Naples yellow, cerulean blue;

The door is locked and the window, too;

Madder red and deep chrome green;

The face in the mirror is long and lean

And laughing most uncannily.

A housemate who’s a CAMH worker

Says exams have caused go full berserker

The fair northern artist Maid

To whom all tributes are willing paid

Except, of course, hard Currency.

The landlord cried “it’s got to stop;”

“If ought should happen, the rent will drop!”

She grabbed the phone and called a copper

As was only right and proper

To staunch her liability.

The officer came, boots and Glock a’glisten;

He crept and stood, and leaned to listen;

He could have heard a dropping pin;

Said, “Ma’am, sorry, but I’m coming in;

It’s all for your security.”

The fair maid’s door the copper bashed;

Into her chamber the whole crowd dashed;

‘Mid brushes, paint and flowing hair,

The ghostly Maid was lying there,

Expired upon her Artistry.

Snake-tongued gurlfriends shed winsome tears,

Colleagues hid from private fears;

Then eyes of cop and landlord, snitch and weasel,

Turned to the majesty ‘stride the easel,

Awed by the spirit, dabbed and globbed into waves

That could steel the wills of heroes or quake the hearts of knaves.

Yet, on its subject they could not concur;

Those claiming her friendship did equal aver:

“’Tis the Lake, aye, that was her womb!”

“’Tis the Lake, aye, that was her tomb!”

. . .

Chariot of the Plebs

The icy wind rattles the salt-filmed bus stop panes,

Night yet weighing heavy on tired and fevered brains;

Weak and blurry forms huddled in puffy coats,

Hacking puffs of fog from mucous-clotted throats;

The Chariot of the Plebs, in tri-color livery,

Comes lurching by unpunctually,

Diesel fumes billow a charcoal plume;

No merry voice nor lyric tune doth break the leaden gloom.

Its cargo – padded like penguins, packed like sardines –

Sri Lanka, Jamaica, the Philippines:

Imported – cut rate – from this and that far-distant land,

Bricked up – at handsome profit – in castles made of sand…

43B, 86E, Bloor-Yonge Line and LRT;

Is this how it was supposed to be?

In a box making boxes, to pay the rent on a box

Secured from one’s fellow man by half a dozen locks

Or shelling out for hackneyed styles while one works for free –

Why, the sugar coolie’s pay was as a prince to thee! –

Fretful fur-trimmed zombies, on the sap of the Maple tree drunk –

‘Tis bitter, alas, as Hemlock – Oh! Who would have thunk?

. . .

Ashes of a Beachside Fire

A waning noon in early Spring,

Lilac skies reveal the waxen moon

As northbound cloudwalls rumbling bring

Brooding shades o’er the tussocked dune.

Wearied mind and dust-greyed shoes, I reach

The circling stones of a camping fire

On a grove-ringed spit of City beach

In sight of the heaven-piercing spire.

Five years of snow in this cloistered spot,

Autumn rains and the vandal heart of Man

Have spared this humble, sacred grot

Where we feasted, drank, shared joke and plan.

Soot yet stains each egg of wave-smoothed shale,

Shrine of youthful commensality;

I toss a pinch of the cinders pale –

A gust dispels their unity.

Round this primal hearth there gathered six,

With fork-stuck wurst and mallow brand,

Where lie these stones and scorch-tipped sticks

And steel-faced waters crash the rock-piled strand.

As the Ash-fruits in the March-wind shivering,

I feel my spirit frail and bare;

When Winter does its winnowing,

Who chooses how we fare?

One lies buried, as some repugnant sin

That burned, self-expending, in the nocturne din.

Two have flown, like the maple’s breeze-borne seed,

Seeking far Salvation as traitors to our creed.

Two have gone to hiding

In a war they cannot win,

Work and play repelling

The thoughts lone midnights breed.

A bird of passage roaming a Paradise Lost

In melancholic awe,

Here then, at last, is me;

I raise a torch, cold in the e’entide frost,

And fling it out into the maw

Of that mocking inland sea.

. . .

Leaside Ravine

Down gully clad with grape and strangler vine,

Belted, booted, dark-clad troops in bleaching sun

Grasping weed and branch to scale the cline,

Not far from where the deeds were done,

‘Neath hickory and maple, and cicadas’ brassy whine.

Dusky ramparts shade the sheen

Of the languid, limpid river,

Now snaking silver, now unseen,

Whose murmured tales make hard men shiver.

Aspen-leaves flicker like coins in a pond;

At forest-edge a reporter guileless asks

For what they probe with spade and wand,

Cursing the sin that birthed their tasks,

While rouge-stained twilight, looming low,

Suffuses the swelter with a ruddy glow.

. . .

The Tower

The Tower rises – stern and steely spire –

Rises over the Lake, surveying the frost-bit lands,

Beacon – aglow with neon fire –

For eager eyes and willing hands,

Led by rude or noble lusts,

Fed by hopes, frail or delirious,

Till, by process both plain and mysterious,

Bones and minds and dreams alike

Are quietly,

Quietly worn to dust.

After the night –

Long and dense and brooding night –

A brief and cold and pallid light:

Unforgiving Day;

The beacon fades,

Fades to grey;

Fades,

Fades away.

Cities of the Plain

Where the Don and Humber carved their way
Down to the Lake, through grey and iron clay
Shone Cities six, spires of ice in fleeting winter day.

Rich and teeming, provincial indulgence
Painting ikons in Boreal effulgence;
As the riptide unseen surging,
Shoreside eminence, so fast emerging,
That absence – four years’ span –
Made native son a stranger-man.
Where sprang one at eve came two at morrow
Out from tarry field and concrete furrow;
Ambition’s airy dust spread o’er seeds of sorrow.

Like moths in the firelight of LED dreams,
Trusting all is thrice what it seems,
The beacon spire,
Polychrome with flameless fire,
Drew them in from all aroun’;
From fishing port and fact’ry town;
From orchard groves in Niagara’s lee
And grave-dark woods, where voyageur and Cree
Stalked the prize beaver by the edge of an inland sea,
And beneath a chilling iv’ry moon
The Shield-rock echoes the mournful loon.

No amber yield of the prairie loam;
No silv’ry haul from th’Atlantic gloam
Shored the roots of that swordless Rome.
No gold, no silver its custom paid,
Electric notions their code of trade
Of which a virtue their suited prophets made;
Their wages – not but toil –
Feeding fruits born of no earthen soil.

Tho’ hearts a’weary and credit spent,
Higher yet, their steely piles upward went;
Higher yet, their seedy hutches’ rent.
Tho’ swarm-sick souls sought far exiles;
Tho’ the saccharine maple fled their planted aisles,
They scaled the skies and sealed the ground, rooves pressed close like floortop tiles.

In relict towns,
Faces limned with careworn frowns,
Old folk huffed and crowed
But stemmed not their children’s outward flow;
Hearth-fires paled to deathly white
Before the awesome, opiate light
That drunks the halls of sleepless night.

Bearing envy of courage and fame,
They changed each honoured, ancient name;
They toppled knights of marble and bishops in bronze
To spare the ‘feels’ of haughty pawns.
In Council void of counsel, in the brooding crescent hall,
They quaffed the wine of grapes of gall,
Bittermost at budget time, in the waning of the Fall.
The suburbs suffered; their war-chest grew,
And lines long faded again they drew,
Cleaving the city new from out the City true,
On minivan and lawn, heaped value-rated pains,
Yet sent forth not the promised subway trains,
For “tax-cattle be damned, give Us our cycling lanes!”

History’s voices could not implore;
Their spot was the spot of their children no more.
Could they foresee this lost generation –
Their sacred joy in cold privation,
Their perverse and crooked recreation?
In Future’s web blindly caught,
Elder wisdom proud forgot,
Yesterday came an unkenned nought.
No Cassandra wailing doom
Is needful when barely rents a room
A grand – four walls of glazeless gloom.

Worst of all, they forgot the time
When northbound rains beat doleful rhyme
And lake and river wreaked wrath sublime.
A sage of the sidewalk, left cruelly free,
Who’d seen the green grow grey as he,
‘Mid Dundas’ throng, where none could see,
Strode forth in garments patched and thin
And hoarse above the mumbling din
Decried the marks of sheepish sin.

They scoffed and went on walking by;
They heard not the thunder in the clouded sky,
For Relief Line trains were rumbling nigh.
The Lake breathed out an inky squall
Which draped in dusk each crystal wall
And made the rain like Judgement fall.
The creeks and ditches burst their sides;
Commuters trapped without their rides;
A car – a house – lakeward slides!
No reedmarsh lay to sponge the muddy pour;
The rivers dash straight through the Core;
No elmwood grove nor ashen bough stood left to grant succour…

A bleakly stretching marshland; a springing weed-choked weald:
What long-forgotten mysteries – what secrets – do they yield,
These stony husks that strew the sodden field?
How long beneath has it thus lain?
The traveller asks the way in vain
Who seeks the Cities of the Plain.

. . .