The Tercet Challenge
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Pearls notoriously form around irritants: grains of sand in oysters. The tercet challenge, along with the radif challenges, is a grain of sand that irritated a number of oysters, resulting in the pearls to be found in this special issue of The Ghazal Page.
The ghazals written in response to the tercet challenge are very successfull. There are some intriguing formal variants, such as Esther Mürer's use of Welsh rhyming for the qafiya in her poem or the use of two radifs in Elliott batTzedek's ghazal. Each of these ghazals deserves careful reading with attention to its sounds.
Please consider submitting tercet ghazals for future issues. Given the quality of these tercet ghazals, they would go well with ghazals written in two-line shers.
Ruby, emerald, diamond, pearl —
What is your treasure of great price
For which you'd sacrifice — your pearl?
I gave it not, you took it not,
Yet there it lies before blind eyes,
Before swine, before you, my pearl.
In the shadows lurks some dark thing
Crying, mad with longing, love, or lust,
"My precious! My precious! My pearl!"
Would you judge the thief, the covetous,
Or the purely idolatrous?
Why? Leave it for the gates of pearl.
Sometimes, the capricious muse may grant
The poet pearls for a necklace, and
Sometimes, a grain of sand for a pearl.