Poem of the week: The Kurdish Musician by Mimi Khalvati

An émigré player’s artistry sings through a London street, rising over many barriers

Carol Rumens

Mon 11 Nov 2024 11.00 GMT

The Kurdish Musician

She is swaddled in pink, sky-blue and veiled
in a gold hejab that with every chime
of her santoor dangles its fringe where trailed

on her cheeks hang coins that bob in time
to her nods, throb in a pause, sway to tremor
and echo. Poised on thumbs, twin hammers mime

a flurry of wings, two thin furred tongues that stammer
at strings, streaming a swarm of rising notes
not through field and hedgerow, blossom and clover,

but through space and stars to the huge black throats
of gully and scarp where all music is stilled,
hived in a dome, as she is, rapt, remote,

impervious to the here and now, hands filled
with flightpaths winging home. Through her who knows
what trails might meet or where pollen has spilled

strange hybrids take, scrub thrive or desert rose;
groundcover prove alive, on five dark grounds
now train its greening shoots? Or who’d suppose

in a London sky, pink, sky-blue, that has wound
itself in the sun’s hejab, in fold on fold
veiled its own dark grounds, she too could be found,
head in the clouds, while ours are fringed with gold?

***

From a fine Collected Poems representing all Mimi Khalvati’s major publications from 1991 to 2019, The Kurdish Musician represents that mysteriously timeless realm of all the best “Collecteds”, the selection of undated poems never previously included in a book.

Khalvati’s poetic achievement, recently recognised by the award of the King’s gold medal, has been shaped by her profound imaginative relationship with her home country of Iran. The musician in the poem is a kindred spirit; exiled from the neighbouring regions of western Asia that comprise Kurdistan, she transfigures her own loss into re-possession, and makes a gift of her presence to those under the “London sky” who witness her artistry.

The instrument the woman is playing is a hammered dulcimer, its tonal complexity suggested by the terza rima weave of the verse-form the poet has chosen. The woman’s relationship to her instrument is evoked by the keenly observed rhythmical movements of her body, while the soft organic colours of her clothes, “gold”, “pink” and “sky-blue”, harmonise her with the sunset. The hammers she wields both “mime / a flurry of wings” and are “two thin furred tongues”. The tongues “stammer at strings” in a flickering movement which is nevertheless productive, “streaming a swarm of rising notes” – finally bringing wings and tongues together, and suggesting birdsong. This is birdsong with resonance beyond English pastoral, however; the music bypasses “field and hedgerow” with their seasonal markers of spring blossom and summer clover. It ascends “through space and stars” and its reach seems both topological and cosmic. The “huge black throats / of gully and scarp where all music is stilled” seem to indicate a partly metaphysical space which is not only the musician’s mountainous homeland but an ideal realm above the earth. The interplay of images comes briefly to rest in the idea of absolute mental concentration (another way of being “hived in a dome”) and the still-active culmination of the “flight” metaphor in the beautifully imagined “hands filled / with flightpaths winging home”. The musician is “remote” from her surroundings, but fully present to the music and the double sense of location it sets free.

Now the focus is literally brought down to earth to be re-grounded in its subsoil. The vitality of multidirectional movement expresses itself through the pollination and proliferation of plants, perhaps to produce “strange hybrids” or basic but essential “scrub” and “groundcover”. The metaphorical landscape is tightened by questions, the first concerning what “trails” may have accrued from the musician’s trials of emigration. Perhaps the “five dark grounds” represent areas geologically inhospitable to life, and there may be implications of the politically “dark grounds” which the welcoming sky veils in “the sun’s hejab”. The final question affirms the arrival of the musician as enrichment and challenges negatives of exile and emigration: “… who’d suppose… she too could be found, / head in the clouds while ours are fringed in gold?” The delicacy and versatility of words such as “fringe”, “trail” and “veil” heighten an impression of what we might call, narrow-mindedly, other-worldliness, but the poem knows that the musician’s seemingly transcendental power is earthed. Like the sun she touches the heads of the gathered crowd with gold.

THE GUARDIAN