swirls in the glass of intoxication - datura
I sat down to write an intro to my poems collection stating “these are in chronological order. there’s 2 parts”.
and then this whole other thing happened.
Introduction
“If you want to know god, enjoy the company of lovers”
Rumi
Long ago, I spent a couple years nestled in the hills of Rio de Janeiro. The jungle-facing backyard was home to a family of marmoset monkeys, emerald hummingbirds, and the queen of the night - sumptuous, white-blooming datura.
The word “beguiling” must have been composed for her perfume - not a fragrance but a full-blown spell that swells to a rich crescendo every nightfall.
Every night, the same ritual unfolded. After dusk the breeze would carry it into my room from the courtyard, gliding supreme over every other scent of the tropical night.
The faintest hint of datura banished my ability to think. Stopped the clock.
Unique. Heavenly. Decadent.
She brushed my every nerve like an aching violin.
And it made me want to shred my own skin.
It made my blood boil and my legs tremble with an unbearable lust for something not of this world.
When I met Nadim in the temple, I could smell it in the air between us.
The imperious summons of the datura bloom.
Beckoning to a place where the mind shatters.
I thought we would share one perfumed night only. I was wrong. Our nights stretched, bewilderingly, into seasons, and continue still. Flowered. Beguiling.
I love how his mother-tongue casts it as vivid invocation : “crazy in your god”, revelation swirls in the glass of intoxication.
Fling the tatters of the world you knew to the dogs and open.
Open - éclore, in French. A verb used only for the opening of flowers.
I opened, like a flower, through a flower’s teachings on the secrets of night and the gifts of poison.
Poems started pouring out of me.
They are gathered here just as Nadim read them, day after day with the ink barely dry. Two years between the temples and the city, the islands of magic and the streets of Berlin. Building home.
The abortion slipped from these pages to inhabit a whole book of its own.
Its ghost blesses these pages - but this is the path walked when we are two.
Travel diaries on following the fragrance…
May we always have the courage to follow where love beckons. `
photo by Carina Adam