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Phantom forms flicker and dance on the walls of the cave.
What care prisoners for Plato's ghosts? The ground is damp.
The dogs are real. Flesh feels the force of the cave.
Embrace the anointment – it's Nero's Rome. The cavern's call
Comes to the sleepers on wings like a basilisk's. A wild son
Stands guard like the Sun and the Moon at the mouth of the cave.
The command to read comes from a voice with six-hundred wings.
Wild fear flutters in a confusion of markings and signs
Masking the air. The awe of language lifts from the cave.
A spider dances on signs of emptiness. The seekers read
Writings on silk and turn away. The words of a third
Thin out the air with a final sigh on the floor of the cave.
They scrambled, and raged, and gasped, and thrust out the old year
They sucked, and hollered, and spilled, and grasped in the New Year
Katie gave herself license, Dave was simply that drunk
They slipped off together into the howling, new year
Marty fell asleep with a fresh drink and a lit smoke
His house burned to the ground within hours of the New Year
It was more than a sympathy fuck, he'd later say
Then why hasn't she called you, three weeks into the New Year?
It snowed, rained, then snowed again as cars slipped and skidded
RCMP were busy well into the New Year
His hometown looks strange since the roto in Kandahar
At first, he hadn't expected to live through the New Year
Forget getting plastered and throwing up all evening
We're going to bed early to sleep through the New Year
It was the closest to hell the detective had seen
The whole house reeked of death; first Sunday of the New Year
They set up their gear in the apartment's living room
Played covers for four, five dozen rocking in the New Year
She puts on some make-up then takes a taxi to work
Coffee and customers greet her hung-over New Year
They skidded, and yowled, and screwed, and yawned out the old year
They blazed, and huddled, and stabbed, and jumped in the New Year
A time for ebullience; another night on the piss
Matt jots down a half-remembered, half-made-up New Year
for Ruth
Sons and daughters digging with desert hands,
whisper stories, like blowing sand, of hands.
Jadd weaves like a spider in the corner,
broom-string over straw, bowed over bent hands.
Made of gnarled branch and bread, Grandmother
soothes a fever with ancient, medicine hands.
From torn, flapping, gypsy tents in badlands
light and children are banished by brash hands.
Whores languish in beds alone; men shear sheep,
make deals, stroke stone like bone with dirty hands.
Caressing secret words in corners dark
with night, pages turn under anxious hands.
Fists clasp and rise for religion, then earth
becomes a wasteland beneath human hands.
Parched and brown, thirteen years old, Alusine
aims his AK 47 with grave hands.
A landmine steals God's limbs, he must summon
and bath his new children with phantom hands.
Nothing left but a gesture, my love, I will
weave strands of sun through your hair with worn hands.
You tapped my chest: follow the beat, my heart.
Your gaze is clear, our eyes replete. My heart!
O the flight of fancy, the rage of love
overflows all bounds, reason unseats, my heart.
Yet the bounds are real, firm. Your simple word
banks back the fire, the flames retreat, my heart.
O it were not so! This thorn path, slow trod;
may turn grassy walk, I entreat, my heart.
How far the arid sand? The night alone?
The desert chill? The sorrow sweet? My heart!
Shall despair be so deep, eyes overcloud.
My step falter, fallen crow's meat my heart?
O morning star, will thou fade all vain hope
Or bring light to my weary feet, my heart?
Garden or mirage? Welcome or depart?
Life-giving warmth or deadly heat, my heart?
O how I yearn for the blessed clear morn,
When word is out, when next we meet, my heart.
With a glance you converted me: I am your worshipper, sweet Ghazala!
For love is a feast, and the soul is never replete, Ghazala.
O I could draw down the crescent moon for a sword and slay
Fifty infidels; you give me strength for this feat, Ghazala.
How it thrills me to touch your skin, it is smooth as the merchant's silk,
Fragrant as the garden where we secretly meet, Ghazala!
What joy to lie with my head on your breast in the cool of the night!
But before the muezzin's first call I steal into the street, Ghazala.
I weep to leave you behind on your scented cedar bed —
But your husband is watchful, we must be discreet, Ghazala.
When Allah is on my lips, your name resounds in my heart.
But a thief haunts life's crowded bazaar, and his fingers are fleet, Ghazala.
Time pockets the hours — even I, your defender, Amir, cannot stop him.
Alas, that your beauty must wither like drought-stricken wheat, Ghazala!
David Jalajel's experiment with Robert Bly's tercet stanzas for a ghazal speaks to me on several levels. Living as I do in the Cave State, having been very much impressed by Plato's allegory of the cave when an adolescent, having been in literal caves a few times and figurative caves more than a few times, being aware of the revelation of the Koran to Muhammad in the Cave of Hira — all these associations resonate in this ghazal for me as a reader. The language that dances in this cave is both fierce ("six hundred wings") and ethereal ("a final sigh"). The resonant music of vowel and consonant shapes the interior of this ghazal.
Matthew Stranach's poems tell strong stories of people in various desparate poses, battering, perhaps, at the walls of the cave, seeking the passage outward to the light. His poems in the September and October issues of The Ghazal Page inhabit the same narrative space as this New Year's ghazal.
If David Jalajel's cave is a thesis and Matthew Stranach's New Year's an antithesis, Jessica Bane's ghazal synthesized them — desert, sand, rock and the uses to which we humans put our hands. The varied images of "hands" in this ghazala remind me of the importance Charles Williams placed on the human hand in his fiction and poetry.
From hands to heart and the question: Is the heart a cave? It is indeed a resonant space, resonant with its own processes. Kalim-ji's ghazal takes the reader through several shifts of the heart. Both desert and garden are possible sites for our seeking "the blessed clear morn."
The Beloved is a constant in poetry and especially the ghazal. Arthur Chapin's poem plays with the figure of the human and the poetic beloved, telling a story of stolen and fading delights. His poem is traditional in form and imagery, but still provides surprises for the reader.
Ghazala: Actress? Mother? Poetic form? Or truly a mystery? Google "ghazala" and see what you find.