Thu Jun 5 13:20:37 2003

Here they are: three fine ghazals. Enjoy.

I have enough ghazals to post another set, which I plan to do in five or six weeks. Then it will be up to interested (& talented) poets to supply me with more.

Third Set of Ghazals for 2003

Three Ghazals by Rainforest

Sat May 24 08:42:16 2003

aching
The body as a landscape of pain: stones, sand, darkness, absence.

The images in these couplets acrue to a sense of loss and dying. The "phantom limb" phenomenon becomes itself a phantom of psychic loss, of the soul's descent into places of dryness and dark.

This ghazal suggests to me the Buddhist meditations on the process of dying, one's preparation for inevitable loss.

red dust
Cain's anguished search for the brother he slew; Isaac's remorse over Esau's loss. And, yes, all maps are drawn in sand.

The radif, "near," appears and vanishes, rhymes off other words in its place.

The call of each spiritual tradition: Wake up! But is it too late to wake up when the horsemen have already gathered, when the bloody script is already scrawled?

empty rooms
An empty room, a missed opportunity--also phantom limbs; we sense their absence as a presence of loss.

"door": opens access, closes openings. Open and shut, this door, that door. This opportunity, that map sketched in sand, this brother's blood spilled without recall, those horses stamping impatient hooves in the shadows.

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aching

This phantom limb. A hand in the dark, reaching out
to light a lamp that is no longer there.

On the body's map a river with dry stones in its bed.
I mark the place, one finger along her spine

Stretched between one rib and the next, a multitude of sighs.
To the dying man each breath is longer than the one before

In your chest, a clenched fist. A stone. A water-clock, filled with sand.
All of these. Emptiness takes the shape of its vessel.

Admit it, Rain. You too have longed for happiness.
In your bones the ache is both itself and its absence.

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red dust

At the desert's edge the Horsemen are gathering
Once more the end of the world draws near

Today a map, tomorrow nonsense lines drawn
in a careful hand. Whole cities erased, hidden by sand

Silence falling, then bombs. Explosions echo
halfway across the world, too near

Gouged into the walls of trenches, scrawled blood-red
on city rooftops: Where is my brother?

Children of our time, all these the dust keeps to itself
The whole world is filled with their absence yet they are near

Against blackness, lit rooms hang in midair
beacons for those who seek to extinguish all lights

Sleeper, awaken--the end of the world has come and gone
but what brave dawn will greet you when this sandstorm clears?

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empty rooms

I never spoke to her of love, fearing a slamming door
she's gone now not even the sound of that door

before she came here a house full of silence
this heart became home when she moved in next door

"no sleep so deep I would not hear you there"
your feet on the stairs your hand on the door

her beloved lives elsewhere, but for me it's enough
that sometimes at night she'll pass by my door

when did we lose desire? and when conversation?
some thief's stolen our words, ear pressed to the door

how many tuneless songs I wrote for you, how many more
growing older and deafer behind this closed door?

forgetting what I entered this empty room for
I'll stay till I remember--faced with these walls, this door

how quickly this dream has faded upon waking!
I'll never again see her face at my door

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