Fourth Set of Ghazals for 2003
Fri Jul 4 15:15:27 2003

Here are three traditional ghazals, each succeeding in its own way. Appropriately, these ghazals share cosmic imagery: rainbows, gravity, stars in the night sky.

All three of these poems--especially Bruce's and Brian's--make use of off-rhyme (or half-rhyme). You may use them for test cases of Joshua Gage's argument for using full rhyme in ghazals. Consistent with Josh's advise to use different parts of speech for the rhyme ("qafiya") all three poets vary between nouns and verbs. Brian uses a couple of adjectives--"more" and "poor"--and even a preposition, "towards," in the first line of the first sher.

I won't comment on the semantic fields created within and between these three ghazals--fields with science, poetry, god, and sex among their poles. But I do think you will find these ghazals especially rewarding.

You might want to read Whitman's "When I heard the learn'd astronomer" and, if you can find it, William Everson's "Syzygy" in connection with these ghazals. Whitman's brief lyric expresses a basic Romantic theme; Everson's long erotic love poem is one of the most powerful such poems in English.



Rainbow

by Bruce Thompson
For my eyes alone did the god of tempests send my rainbow.
Standing in your shoes, you can't even comprehend my rainbow.

Distant, glistening prisms sort waves of sunlight by their length.
Thus do scientists explain, as poets commend, my rainbow.

No girders but the air, no cables by the sun's soft rays,
no towers but the clouds, are needed to suspend my rainbow.

Steeled by its insubstantiality, no force can harm,
no teeth can tear, no bullets pierce, nor saber rend, my rainbow.

At times so distant and aloof, magnificent as a god,
at others near and intimate, like a shy friend, my rainbow.

What craggy peak, what lost meadow, what pristine lake,
what boisterous metropolis, what pot of gold, end my rainbow?

Outside a sheltering café sunlight waltzed down wet sidewalks,
while inside I, the incomplete logician, penned, "My Rainbow."

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Gravity Ghazal

by Colin Flanigan
She says, without words, touch me here, I can taste the gravity
the bed sinks, in a valley around her body, we raced gravity

All this falling and bending is the crux of passion,
in such a moment God's face is gravity

A carnal, red curtained, Richmond night in a soft rented bed
call into question the state of gravity

She says, let's do it over the edge, her hips high,
her breasts grazing the bed sheet, we keep pace with gravity

Buying such hurried moments before the costs of the day,
we make a space inside time and interlace with gravity

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Night Stars

by Brian Samek
An astronomer peers with awe towards the night stars;
He uses a photograph to store the night stars.

Small men sit slumped in little rooms lethargically;
They never see the eagles who soar the night stars.

The woodsman laughed at the sight of society;
Wise woodsman, you have always known more: the night stars!

Does gnosis cause one to explode from the center?
Does one have knowledge enough to soar the night stars?

Among the stars, distance is measured in parsecs;
How dreadfully lonely they feel: the poor night stars.

Upon the fly-ridden carcass, vultures descend;
Newly transformed carcass can now soar the night stars.

Zensufi knows he will nourish the night stars soon--
Death will Transform him; how he adores the night stars.

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