Wednesday \u00a0September 5 – \u201cMy city is that cup of sunshine. . .\u201d
\n{My laptop has just emerged from the EMS unit and I did not have time to write a new one, so this is a favorite from four years ago.}<\/p>\n
Professor Fatemeh Keshavarz, University of Maryland\u2019s Roshan Chair of Persian Studies, is a poet and a scholar. In September 2014, she welcomed us into our academic year by reading a poem she wrote a few days before September 11, 2001 \u2014 before she or we knew about the 9-11 attacks on New York, Washington DC and a field in western Pennsylvania. This first Monday of October, national news led with a story of a violent mass shooting in Las Vegas. It is hard not to go numb with what feels like a relentless rush of hatred carried out with precise killing weapons. Fatemeh locates that same violence in a vast universe of creative intensity and serenity. If you were not there in 2014, and even if you were, it\u2019s worth reading again (http:\/\/danmurano.com\/poetry\/fatemeh-keshavarz<\/a>).<\/p>\n Here is another of Fatemeh Keshavarz\u2019s poems. She celebrates \u201cShiraz,\u201d her home city in Iran, which has lived as a center for art and beauty for c. 4000 years. Wikipedia tells me that \u201cThe oldest sample of wine in the world, dating to approximately 7,000 years ago, was discovered on clay jars recovered outside of Shiraz.\u201d<\/p>\n Detroit is only 316 years old, but I am using the poem to celebrate Motown today. The beauty of taste and the pause that good wine inspires, can help put terror in its much larger context of the human condition over centuries. Lift a glass when you get off work.<\/p>\n Best read \u201cShiraz\u201d out loud several times, with some pauses. Have a blest day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n John sj<\/p>\n \u201cShiraz\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Held up to gods My city is <\/p>\n Shiraz, Dec. 21, 2000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wednesday \u00a0September 5 – \u201cMy city is that cup of sunshine. . .\u201d {My laptop has just emerged from the EMS unit and I did not have time to write a new one, so this is a favorite from four … Continue reading
\nIn the palm of a giant\u2019s hands
\nA rare handcrafted marble cup
\nBrimming with sunshine
\nDefined at the outer edges
\nWith tall cypress trees
\nThat line up at dawn reverently
\nTo interpret the horizons
\nIn their meticulous green thoughts
\n***<\/p>\n
\nThat cup of sunshine
\nI can drink to the last drop
\nAnd be thirsty for more.<\/p>\n