The Mismatched Thread, the Crooked Line

Caitríona Reed  

    for Safoura Ashtiany

The miniaturists of Mughal India, the carpet makers of Tabriz, and the silversmiths of Turkey, always put a single deliberate flaw into their work. A perfect artifact is considered an insult to God. Perfection is God’s work. In the best carpets there is always a mismatched thread; in the best paintings, there is always a line out of place. Perhaps the brokenness of the world, which is our own brokenness, originates from our stubborn insistence on the ideal of perfection. Living with integrity doesn’t mean you never make mistakes.

The ground is already dry and dusty

in the pasture where I walk with the dog.

The branches of the ribbon wood trees

and oaks

are damaged from too much grazing,

too many cows.

The native bunch grass will be replaced

year by year

by annuals and wild mustard.

Someone has left an empty beer can.

 

the world is not broken

the world is not broken

Centuries later

the silver platter

imperfectly round

continues to arrive at it’s own shining destination,

like an earth in patterned circles moving around its patterned sun

beyond good or bad

perfect or otherwise, moving and

it is done

it is true

The fragile hour-glass of the sky

its invisible blood

its fractured upper layers.

It’s hard to believe that this is not deliberate—

the poisoning of children

the silencing of forests

the encroaching sands

the oration on the radio.

I listen to someone insisting

there is no population

problem. All that open space

when you fly

across the country!

We need more people

to help the country grow!

I am not bitter

I want to say

that in the mismatched thread

the crooked line

in the disembodiment

of the imagination

there is a perfection of another sort

I walk with eyes closed

through steep canyons

Someone called this ‘ God’s Country.’

I am not bitter

© Caitríona Reed May, 1999