For the fifth event in the Wild Court Reading Series, we are delighted to welcome acclaimed poet Sascha A. Akhtar.
Sascha is the author of seven metaphysical poetry collections, a short story collection Of Necessity And Wanting embracing social realism, and a volume comprising a biography and first-time translations of Hijab Imtiazs’ little known manuscript Adab-E-Zareen (Oxford University Press, 2023). Her debut collection The Grimoire of Grimalkin (2007) was reissued by Prototype in 2024.
Sascha will be reading and in conversation with T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet and King’s College London lecturer, Anthony Joseph. The event takes place on KCL’s Strand Campus, London, from 6pm on Thursday 27th March. Click here for more details and to reserve your free tickets.
Ahead of the event, we feature four poems by Sascha below.
I
When the now, the clip-clopping of the hooves of miniature
horses on a tiny paved stretch, the fluttering of a ribbon
tied to the post of a street sign, the settling of today’s rain
on the grass, on the leaves, slipping off into the soil,
the man naked who appears in the window across the street,
the flickering blue of a television screen in another window,
the march of pleasure seekers on a Friday night,
yourself in your own body, the image of a clock
on the wall, the lingering aroma of foods prepared this afternoon; the now,
when it evades you, drop to the ground, press an ear up against it, sooth
your cheek on the dirt & you will hear the song of the atom
before it splits, the last words of a star before it implodes into blackness,
the music of the rings of Saturn, the drum-beats of the dinosaur before he became extinct, the sigh of the door being sealed in the tomb of Nefertiti, the hush of Lucifer as his wings were clipped, the murmuring of the night when day threatens it, and the steady mounting laughter of the world when it is told it is going to end.
II
Do you know what it is like, night after night to run
on the seabed of your own imaginings, to be rifled through
like hands searching through pockets looking for
forgotten money. To cast a tapestry of shadows each night
on walls that care to sleep now, but you can only bleat
now. Do you know what it’s like to walk on water, and
grasp for arms to hold you, to watch murders of people
you do not know. To see a face of an angel, would you rush
into traffic and take the chance of losing your very, very
life. Can you pretend for a split of a second that a tree
is you, a tentacle is you, the soft pad on the paw of a cat
is you, the hair on the floor of a barber shop is you, a
pile of rotting leaves is you, rain-water slicking the streets
is you, sugar in a stranger’s cup of coffee eight hundred
miles away is you, you are a car smouldering on the
highway, you are the highest star looked upon from
above, you are a mountaineer asphyxiating from lack of
oxygen on Mt.Everest, an insect crawling on the page is
you, every wheel turning is you, a woman screaming
giving birth is you, a homeless man fainted on the street
from hunger is you, an anthill, all it’s convoluted
passageways is you and you are also, the ant, the Andes,
the Himalayas, the Alps, the restitution of this night
remembered, the cars careening on highways, the telephone
poles, the underground sewage system, the waste of human
lives gurgling, every drop of blood flowing in every
artery, every vein in every living body in every town, in
every city, in every country is yours. Every dead body
buried in the earth is you. Every heart beating is you.
Every slow chant is you. Every muttering in disturbed
sleep. Every eye opening. Every foot touching the earth,
treading,treading the surface. Every hand holding
another hand, every tooth biting, tearing, chewing,
grinding, gnawing, every throat gulping, every
taste bud on every tongue tasting another tongue. Dead
skin falling off every body, new skin growing everyday.
Pieces of you lost in the sea fall to the seabed and are
planted. You become an anemone. A cucumber. Your
hair is plankton, your limbs seaweed. Your eyes are the
light of the Noctiluca, carnivorous. Your heart is the
green dragon rising up to meet the golden orb in
the crepuscular dawn.
IV
When you rest do you feel the gentle whirring of the humming
bird, still but faster then any one person can move, on your
cheek, as it sucks the nectar of your soul, that feeds it.
When your eyelids have glided over your eyes protecting
them like a tigress growling at an intruder who threatens
her tigrets, and you, the wisp of breath is set free to
the air, to traverse the magnolia fields of midnight and
caress the dunes in the Mojave desert, when your body is
still and warm do you feel the batwings beating your breast,
unleashed from mine, they try to wake you to feed you
the hypnagogue extracted of fruit that will put you back into your
rest, having received a gift of oracles and demi-gods. And in your
stupor, who calls you, is there a tempest whirling
in the centre of your being, a cyclone hurling houses
in your pagan march, a beast that bellows your name
in the canyons of its territory, a sorceress opening the skin
on your back with her fingernails, or druids erecting
behemoth stones, a festival of suns, the scales of a fish
glistening, a willow tree wooing the moon, a Viking taking
his last breath, hot mineral baths soothing the savage,
fields of jasper, quartz and agate growing like bluebells,
lithe sirens pulling you into a blue grotto, the tongues
of many fires licking you dry. In your stillness, is there
nothing but stillness, the quiet of Nothing and you surrender to
the sirocco that has travelled many ages, traversed the
distant continents to kiss your temple, and whisper in your
ear, until you awake.
VII
Night lends its hand to a wing heavy with the whimsical
enchantment of the geisha with parasols in the sun-filled
crescents of hollowed skies reflected in all our eyes, a
wind of hushed remembrance as light trickles into the
deep blue magick of the nocturne melting into sunrise.
A flashing inroad into another windowless room &
diadems set with amber, a certain deprivation of the depth
of lost consciousness, a fleck in the distance, floating.