in a waiting room with paintings Samiah Haque when you want something soft look at this pastel drawing: the artist had smelled soft a whiff in a busy street and a house near the mountains with a lake of shining waters, isn't that soft? and isn't that inner joy, red of apples and a green? isn't it a place to dream for? look at the singing grasses, the quietude of a house in starlight sound of a bangle against the door jamb, a bird with large seeing eyes? in our lands the poppies grow in winter around us is ice and ice and a sun which makes it too beautiful for sight and whiter for the red buds--we don't touch once there was a wind, and you sought the darkness of my hair to keep, to keep--in these plains i want to kiss you, and to kiss into you truth, something other than an imagined softness.