Back to 2006 Ghazals
Issue Nine
- A Ghazal For Ramadan, Robert Godwin
- Ghazal [Over the hill], Mary Cresswell
- To Ghazal Luna, Joel Neubauer
- Ghazal for Blood Oranges, Joan Logghe
- Editor's Comments
A Ghazal For Ramadan
by Robert Godwin
Our cousins we must greet this holy Ramadan,
As Jew and Muslim meet this holy Ramadan.
They gather in the social hall downstairs to pray,
For God they would entreat this holy Ramadan.
Soon the evening prayers are done; they join with us
In bare or stockinged feet this holy Ramadan.
The Rabbi and Imam will try to keep it brief,
Then join with us to eat, this holy Ramadan.
Tables piled with diverse foods, the sights and smells
Make quite a sensuous treat, this holy Ramadan.
The young ones on the floor, like some great plate of fruits,
Appealing, pure and sweet, this holy Ramadan.
Grownups sit, to talk of things both great and small;
There must be no deceit this holy Ramadan.
The evening closes; school and work still lie ahead.
All feel the mood upbeat this holy Ramadan.
Our guests have left; its time to store in heart and mind
What yet is incomplete this holy Ramadan.
We are the hosts this special night, and very soon
This meeting they'll repeat this holy Ramadan.
These aging bones may ache, yet hope is in my heart,
Walking down the street this holy Ramadan.
Ghazal [Over the hill]
by Mary Cresswell
They joked about their ages: was everyone over the hill?
They didn't see the Tiger Moth start its run over the hill.
Baring secret weapons we seek Atlantis under the seas.
We are configured to land at Erewhon, over the hill.
Empty space suits circle the Earth, talking to Mission Control.
Ignoring East Africa, they'll go to war over Brazil.
The navy frigate rocked -- you should have seen how it rocked! -- but now
The sun's over the yardarm and the captain's under the keel.
Blackwing parrots tell us how to dress for the final assault:
White cockades, scarlet leather boots, and spurs worn over the heel.
Ten thousand red clay soldiers wait. They are silent as the dawn.
With soft sable brushes we begin to uncover the hill.
The last of the Amazons contemplates the lark at morning
Shoots it out of the sky. She can barely recover its thrill.
The immortelles, the dried hydrangeas, my anomalous ghosts
Crawl into the libraries. Green roses grow over the hill.
To Ghazal Luna
by Joel Neubauer
Demure and distant: poor excuses when you break your crystal gaze.
In shameful negativity, you spin and shake your crystal gaze.
Cross crater-depth deflected eyes, you drag, you rake each fickle phase.
Anorthositic haunt reflections: wan you stake your crystal gaze.
The sight, young night when first we kissed, cannot forsake or more amaze.
My eyes are open when we kissed, full moon partake your crystal gaze.
What regimented form, ballet: o turns to ache, relations raze.
Staid seated in your audience, you'll soon remake your crystal gaze.
Dream turns in tortured new moon sleep; Regret awakens new malaise.
Dreams melancholy shiver in the dark to quake your crystal gaze.
I love the thought: We once were one; but forced, we take our separate ways
If I'm but dust, yet suffer me to ever make your crystal gaze.
Ghazal for Blood Oranges
by Joan Logghe
for Marc Ellis
The sliced moon clutches the sky like a segment of blood orange.
Her Catholic husband reminds her what it means to be a Jew.
It is at moon rise the fear grows wild, men throwing
rocks, how can the men throwing gunfire be Jews?
Two extremes. Where are the quiet voices, the mothers, the lovers,
peaceable kingdom of Arab lambs lying down next to lion Jews?
Put this in the hands of women, the Arab journalist says
about his people and the Jews.
Fingers on the left hand, fingers on the right,
"Cousins," Naomi said of the Arabs and the Jews.
In October, during war times, Naomi and I stripped
and soaked among women who could not tell a naked Arab from a Jew.
Living so far out she raised her children with no affiliation,
weeps when she sits in her childhood temple, east among Jews.
Daughters of Jerusalem, I was the daughter of a haberdasher
now buried on a steep hillside filled with Russian Jews.
I dream of the city of Jerusalem, the blood orange
one fruit of God filled with sections of Arabs and Jews.
We have been whipping this camel a thousand years.
Isn't it time to bite a date, break bread, transcend Arab and Jew?
An eye for an eye, an Uzi for a rock. The late poet Amichi said,
"If we're always right, spring never comes," and he was a Jew.
I have apologized, stood tall in public. My hands
have thrown stones. My hands have held guns aimed at Jews.
I'd have been lousy in the holocaust, no Anne Frank.
If I were Israeli now, what kind of Jew?
My Zen teacher travels to Auschwitz. The sons
of Nazi guards sit next to the daughters of old Jews.
La Illah ha or Shema. We are the Arab son killed in his father's arms.
We are the guns. Listen, God wrestlers, isn't God One?
Editor's Comments
Ramadan this year is expected to begin on September 24 in the Western calendar. For more about Ramadan, see here and here.
Since the ghazal originated in Islamic societies, it's only appropriate to recognize this important feast period. Two of the four poems in this issue relate to Ramadan from the perspective of non-Muslims. Robert Godwin's poem narrates an ecumenical feast after sunset on a day of Ramadan. There, he finds hope of reconciliation between Muslim and Jew. Joan Logghe's ghazal probes further into both the personal and the political, broadening the scope to include Christianity and Zen. What is encouraging about each of these poems is their personal directness and acknowledgment that we humans are inter-connected, no matter how much we try to deny that. While Bob's poem is purely celebratory, Joan's acknowledges personal guilt and weakness in the face of our self-destroying conflicts.
Mary Cresswell's clever uniting of qafiya and radif gives her ghazal a freshness that matches the hope expressed throughout the poem, even in a world of "war over Brazil" and "empty space suits." And isn't the purpose of religious -- of spiritual -- observance to renew us, to help us in our trek "over the hill"?
Radif, qafiya, and more -- the rhyme that ends the first line of each sher. Since that extra rhyme rhymes with the radif, we have more reflections, as in crystal, as in feldspar, as in dreams, and in echoes of other sounds with each other. "If I'm but dust" -- but isn't that the rub, that this dust can kiss the light, be one with it, however transiently. This Luna is the changeable, feminine Moon, place of reflections, of brilliant light and shadow.