Back to 2006 Ghazals
Issue Two
This issue of The Ghazal Page is dedicated to the memory of Larry Paul Vonalt, late Chair of the Department of English and Technical Communication at the University of Missouri-Rolla. Larry was a careful, responsive, and appreciative reader of The Ghazal Page. This issue is for him.
- Ghazal of Morning, Rainforest and Leonard Ng
- Debates, Colin Flanigan
- In this Town, Taylor Graham
- Adrien's Ghazal, Karma de Gruy
- Editor's Comments
Ghazal of morning (for two voices)
by Rainforest and Leonard Ng
All night I waited for a sign: one borne on the wings of morning
but even the sun, it seems, is exiled from the sky this morning.
Sunbeams stab the sleeping clouds; scarlet from deep wounds streaming,
twisted into coral strands to adorn the wrist of morning.
The crickets are asleep or silent; perhaps they too are weary of their
song:
"At evening there is weeping, but joy shall come with morning."
Eyes stare, transfixed, and stiffen, as daybreak lets fall her robe;
dark waters surge in deep climax and die, lost to the plunge of morning.
In the garden of memory I linger on, unwilling to depart;
I gather there night's secrets, tears, to set alight each morning.
Earth wakes in conflagration; the horizon is ablaze;
nothing escapes the ravaging kiss, the ruthless bliss of morning.
Light follows dark; so too the seasons, in this world that keeps on
turning.
O Rain, even the birds know this. And soon it will be morning.
And I, poor fool, what shall I do, in the face of the onrushing day?
That which you've known all along, Len. Surrender to the morning.
Debates
by Colin Flanigan
We're opening envelopes, talking about telescopes,
debating the existence of God.
We're in our church seats, with war in the world streets,
praying for the persistence of God.
We're painting Angels pushing planets, at divine tangents,
presenting the presence of God.
We're writing ghazals, after walking these long empty halls,
debating the existence of God.
In this Town
by Taylor Graham
At ten o'clock the sun illuminates an alley.
I've seen you often and still I am a stranger.
Each new springtime gathers blossoms, bird-
song—but to the whippoorwill I am a stranger.
I've sailed my red and yellow kites, and run
away headlong laughing, until I am a stranger.
An opening door, the flutter of a curtain.
With not much time to kill, I am a stranger.
People shake their heads and shake another's
hand, and write the bill. I am a stranger.
Who pays for time? Who ever reaps his harvest?
Even with my seeds to spill, I am a stranger.
A ghost-town keeps its spirits thin as dust,
each voice forever shrill: I am a stranger.
Adrien's Ghazal
by Karma de Gruy
With the gentle arc of paths where there's cut grass, the mind unlocks.
One voice stops an angry mantra, breathes at last, the mind unlocks.
When the whirring stopped, I knew, without the need to look,
what flat scattering of tears in looking glass the mind unlocks.
There never is a moment fantailed, elegant and new, so different
as when the sunlight angles on this golden compass; the mind unlocks.
You cycle, swimming, pouring through the minutes, flipped like ragged
pages of a calendar whose days are past—your mind unlocks.
I thought I knew you when I knew. I thought I heard the endless
breath, the earthy smell of fear. In heaven's forecast, the mind unlocks.
When I wandered away, and then came back again, I bore
a thousand shards of dialogue unsaid, of roles miscast. The mind unlocks.
Breathe deep, and savor time, and take its passing as a sneak attack of love.
Breathe, simply, on the rocks when you come to this impasse; the mind unlocks.
Editor's Comments
The first ghazal here is a dialog—a duet. The interplay of voices gives "Ghazal of morning" a dynamism of image and mood that expresses very traditional ghazal themes. I hope these two poets do more of these duets.
From duets, we move to debate. Even though this ghazal is one sher short of the canonical five, it states its theme powerfully. The mystery in this ghazal is not so much "the existence of God" as the identity of "we" who talk, sit, pray, write, and debate. There's an open-endedness in the ghazal that calls the reader to participate.
"In this Town" seems to me a poem of the kind of obliqueness that Emily Dickinson dealt with—the way light slants at a certain time of day, one's physiological response to outer events. Dust and ghosts: who are the ghosts, and who, after all, is the stranger speaking in this ghazal?
As I take it, "Adrien's Ghazal" arises from the experience of a locked mind; I know I often experience that nasty inner mutter, "an angry mantra," that, if one is blessed, stops and then the mind unlocks. What unlocks the mind? Breath, tears, sunlight, flow, fear, regret, breath. (Or that's how I read the shers in turn.)
Does the mind unlock or do we unlock it?