Often it disappears – from hotels,
harbours, airport carousels…
but always it comes back to him.
Trusting in the umbilical dance
of instrument and player
he stays calm in its absence.
Amongst the cosmic flotsam
orbiting Earth this minute
There! Tauseef’s harmonium.
On the sea bed, flexing its gills
for ghazal-hungry shoals
Listen! Tauseef’s harmonium…
sometimes for years until,
missing his voice on the air,
it plunges through the atmosphere
or, surfacing back to the light,
steals in on the tide’s concertina
to appear at Tauseef’s paddling feet –
a child’s shadow through frosted glass
after all hope has been lost.
