Description
‘And at night, they close Rumi’s museum (for this is what they call his mosque since Ataturk.) And a Sufi in green praying at the door bought a poor vendor’s entire store of tomatoes so he would not sleep hungry (And he wasn’t even a Turk, he was American)’
The cloth is torn
Come love, bring me a needle
The needle of love
For the torn cloth of friendship, my friend, my love.
Let us make love one last time
… Such is the magic of Hoshang’s poetry. In and out of cultures, countries, homes and beds, Hoshang has his innocence and spirit undimmed. And both shine through luminously in these poems. These poems contextualize Sufism for the twenty-first century using the wisdom and music of the East. This is a glorious addition to the growing list of new-world poetry.
ISBN 978-9350296394
Hoshang Merchant is India’s pre-eminent voice of gay liberation. Born in 1947 to a Zoroastrian business family in Bombay, India, he graduated in 1968 with a major in English and a minor in the culture of India. On his mother’s side, he descends from a line of preachers and teachers.
Hoshang holds a master’s from Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA. At Purdue University, Indiana, USA, he specialized in the renaissance and modernism. After leaving Purdue in 1975, Merchant attended the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Centre, Massachusetts, USA, and lived and taught in Heidelberg, Iran, and Jerusalem, where he was exposed to various radical student movements of the Left.
He has studied Buddhism at the Tibetan Library, Dharamshala, India, and Islam in Iran and Palestine. Since 1979, seventeen of his books of poetry have been published. He recently retired from the University of Hyderabad, India, after twenty-six years of teaching.
