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I take a shower, slowly and silently.
I pray Buddha, slowly and silently.
I sip wine with hot, finger licking Domino's Pizza,
I lost in taste, slowly and silently.
I play Rahman tracks, 90's melody collection,
I lost in music, slowly and silently.
I read Diwan-e-Tabrizi, some random odes,
I lost in verses, slowly and silently,
I slip into my cotton hammock, an all stars day,
I lost in sleep, slowly and silently.
Karthik says: Take this evening,
Taste it, drop by drop, slowly and silently.
The wind whispering through maple leaves
Sets off endless susurrus of leaves.
Blue depression glass when pressed will scroll
Intricate designs, patterns of leaves.
Your body houses your smile; your soul
Dreams of a time when everyone leaves.
A hummingbird's iridescent charm
Buzzes red berries and emerald leaves.
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose shows
Sisters, light, palest pink among leaves.
Laura spills tears on a marble floor
Remembering only Donna leaves.
These waves crept through the night to break.
Once here, they reach full height then break.
Perhaps they thought they could escape
the crowds by choosing night to break.
Most August tourists are august
and tightly wound despite their break.
While dark these breakers show no shape,
but soon the morning light will break.
By day these sharp, moist winds adjust
their speed and give their might a break.
I rose to hear the pebbles scrape,
feel chilled, and give my sight a break.
In Memoriam: Laden and Laleh Bijani, 1974-2003
Iranian conjoined twins
Laden, it is I, the other of the two of us.
Are you ready to break free and not be two of us?
Ready, Laleh! Soon we walk alone.
Let's bow in prayer a last time now, the two of us.
Let's ask that Allah lead us through this suffering
and guide the hands uncoupling the two of us.
In single beds we'll wake from anaesthesia,
in separate pain and joy. No longer two of us.
To see each other's faces will be happiness.
To face each other! One to one, the two of us.
But if I die, my Laleh, I die willingly.
Let one of us escape the jail of two of us.
And if I die, my Laden, live contentedly.
Live fruitfully, live doubly, for the two of us.
Soon we walk together to the surgery.
Hand in hand, in twofold hope, the two of us.
["The Two" appears in Here from Away (CustomWords, 2003)]
Your face, half clouded in a sudden shadow,
Is beautiful in spite of any shadow.
Pebbles and ripples in a dark pond's shallows
Reflect the light, but all we see is shadow.
Wind abates, birds cease, the sunlight wallows
In darkness of the moon's embracing shadow.
Is it modesty, or is it sorrow
That makes you hide away among the shadows?
Ah, now I see that you retreat to borrow
Peace, for a moment, from the evening shadows.
Night will come, and Conrad will be watching
For one bright glimpse, if only of a shadow.
December for me has always meant winter — ice, cold, snow, wind. I've essentially lived my life in the north temperate zone. Folks who've lived at other latitudes or in the southern hemisphere will have different associations. Nevertheless, my experience has governed my associations. Those associations lead me to the choice of ghazals for this issue and their sequence.
Karthikeyan Palaniappan lives in south India, so his experience of climate is different from mine. His ghazal, "A Beautiful Evening," sets a mood that both contrasts with the temperate zone winter and complements it. The ease which this ghazal conveys, relishing ordinary experiences, sets an emotional context, a frame for the ghazals that follow. Laura A. Ciraolo's "Ghazal for Donna" is not really seasonal, but such imagery as the wind in the maple leaves, the "red berries and emerald leaves" resonate with my sense of winter. And, of course, the loss expressed in the poem fits with the season in which the days grow shorter at this latitute and the nights longer and colder.
San Diego lies in the extreme south of the northern temperate zone, as I read the map, anyway. The seasonal associations with San Diego are not the same as those further north and further inland in North America. It is the breaking and the sharpness, as well as the chill scraping of the last sher that lead me to group this ghazal here. Separation, anaesthesia, surgery, potential death: the situation of these conjoined twins fits, for me, into the emotional patterns of this set of ghazals. We had a storm last night that left sidewalks and grass coated with ice. One has to walk cautiously yet not too cautiously: walking on ice is a balancing, a risk-taking, that rhymes somehow with this ghazal.