January 27, 2010 · 3:29 am

Emperor Akbar. Fatehpur Sikri.

Emperor Akbar. Fatehpur Sikri.

Emperor Akbar. Fatehpur Sikri.

Emperor Akbar. Fatehpur Sikri.

January 26, 2010

The Mughal emperor’s Pachisi Courtyard. In front of the Ibadat Khana, House of Worship.

Akbar’s court poets Faizi and Urfi receive the Persona. Rabindranath Tagore, Amir Khosrow, Kabir, Bulleh Shah, Lalan, and Sarmad, the wild Persian-Jewish convert to Sufism, dressed like a Jain. The mystics and Sufis of India mix and consult. Vyasa, Valmiki, and Tulsidas look on. Persuaded by Tagore, given the trials of the time, Rahman Baba, an Afgani Pashtun, comes down from his mountain village to confer with the poet from the moon. Satya Pir, Dihlawi, Fani Kashmiri, Brahman, Panapati. Evoking the majesty of human history, Lord Alfred Tennyson extols Akbar’s dream.

The many oceans mingle. The dancing girls on the Pachisi Courtyard.

Frederick Glaysher

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January 14, 2010 · 4:25 am

Attar. Conference of Birds. 7 Valleys.

Attar through 7 Valleys

Attar through 7 Valleys

Attar. The Conference of the Birds. Seven Valleys.

January 14, 2010.

Attar and a soaring flock of birds lift the Persona, from the plain of Konya, onto another plane. Through Seven Valleys they fly, from Tabriz to Sulaymaniyah; Shiraz and Hafez, to Nishapur, Khorasan, on the Silk Road; Ferdowsi and a tear over Iran; Alexander’s Bactria and Kandahar; down through the Kyber Pass, Seven Valleys of the Soul, down into India and the plain of Agra. Leaving the poet before Emperor Akbar’s city of Fatehpur Sikri, standing alone, before the lake.

Frederick Glaysher

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January 6, 2010 · 2:15 am

Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.

Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.

Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.

Rumi. Mevlana. Konya.

A house in Konya, ancient Iconium, where St. Paul preached the Gospel. Around and around. Ethereal music and chanting. Another world. Around and around, a pole in a house, Rumi in another world, longing for the Beloved, the scent of her tresses. And then he stopped and asked a question.

We walked through fields of flowers to a riverbank. A reed pulled from its source.

Attar and a flock of birds lift the Persona from that Valley of Search.

Frederick Glaysher

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November 6, 2009 · 7:10 am

Tolstoy. Yasnaya Polyana.

Swirling Tunnel of Time

Swirling Tunnel of Time

Tolstoy. Yasnaya Polyana.

Wainamoinen,  along with Sigurd, Beowulf, and the Valkyries, lift the Persona from the Isle of green to a grove of green, turning toward early fall, as through a swirling tunnel of time, to a birch bench. Tolstoy guides me further along the path, discusses his religious beliefs, mourns his mistakes, grieves Russia’s collapse into the crevasse of modernity. Two young poets swept away into the gulag emerge to carry the Persona from Russia, with Hadji Murad, heading south.

Frederick Glaysher

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