# Ujjain

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2017/08/29/ujjain/
- Published: 2017-08-29T01:26:00+00:00
- Author: shuktara

5/5 - (7 votes)

**Author:** Steffen Horstmann [](https://writersworkshopindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Ujjain.jpg)
**
Pages:** 76 **Year of Publication:** 2017 **Price:** Rs 150 / $15 **ISBN:** 978-
93-5045-159-5 (9789350451595)

_**About the Author**_
 Steffen Horstmann was born in Niskayuna, New York, and attended
the University of Arizona. As Agha Shahid Ali’s student, he studied the history 
of the ghazal form and began writing his own ghazals in English. Horstmann’s poems
and book reviews have appeared in publications throughout the world, including _Baltimore
Review, Free State Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, Oyez 
Review, Texas Poetry Journal_, and _Tiferet_. He lives in Naples, Florida.

_**Teaser**_

_Before You_

Brahma’s voice inhabits whirlwinds that passed before you.
 Starlight glazes the
shadows of djinns amassed before you.

Scripts of sutras rise in calligraphy from your palms,
 Floating in shafts of light
the stars cast before you.

In the dim twilight winged scarabs emerge
 From volatile sands that flow fast before
you.

Winds rave as moonlight streams from the raised swords
 Of Alexander’s brigades 
amassed before you.

A nomad priest counts on a rosary amid debris
 Of a lost caravan that once passed
before you.

Diamonds glisten in dunes as breezes polish
 The relics of Agra’s decadent past 
before you.

The sky is lacquered a rain forest’s colors
 In a dream of Eden stretched vast before
you.

Phoenixes rise from spent pyres as embers pulse
 In the shadow of the one who stands
last before you.

_**Contents**_
 45 poems spread across 3 sections