Sultan Catto

PSITHURISM

Plenteous trees are bustling in my garden
going through adjustments imposed by changing seasons
greening andblooming all through the spring,
emitting fragrances into the night air,
producing fruits mostly in the fall,
some shedding leaves in winter. No matter what,
the old garden replenishes itself year after year.

Trees’trembling branches generate tiny sounds,
songbirds of all species nest in them.
Happy trees, inanimate future of the landscape,
make all sorts of noises as winds are at work,
soft rustling of leaves in a still breeze,
or, a “whoosh” sound before a storm breaks.
Each species has its own distinctive sound
depending on its size and shape,
what a scientist might call a geometric response.

If your ears are wide open to the sounds,
you can hear piano sonatas emanating from their leaves,
jazz concerts, sounds of different drums, and I know even
the Mongolian throat singers’ songsoccupying
their well-defined place among the fig trees.
Sounds reveal numerous things one can’t see.
For instance, you can always tell an oak tree from a maple.
At the end of summer most fill with ripened fruits.
They are generous entities, not caring who eattheir bounties,
a prey to all migrating birds, fruit flies, and other insects.

I have given names to the old ones in my garden,
here they stand, trees with different fruits and names:
Rumi, Li Po, Whitman, Hikmet, Veli, Akhmatova, Brodsky,
Mistral, Kipling, Vallejo, Neruda, Gibran, Transtromer, Fuzuli.
And the younger ones growing between them: Barkan,Wolak,
Ismail, Millan, Abdullah, Thabit-Jones, Gillan, Boss, Seshadri.

New Jersey