Ghazal Poems
Tonight
by Agha Shahid Ali
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?
Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”
“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?
I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—
......
Ghazal
by Agha Shahid Ali
Feel the patient’s heart
Pounding—oh please, this once—
—JAMES MERRILL
I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time.
A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time.
Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hell-fire?
A former existence untold in real time ...
......
Ghazal Of The Better-Unbegun
by Heather McHugh
Too volatile, am I?too voluble?too much a word-person?
I blame the soup:I'm a primordially
stirred person.
Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.
The sound I make is sympathy's:sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
......
Even The Rain
by Agha Shahid Ali
What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain.
"our glosses / wanting in this world" "Can you remember?"
Anyone! "when we thought / the poets taught" even the rain?
After we died--That was it!--God left us in the dark.
And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain.
Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.
......
Departures: Chapter One
by Lisa Russ Spaar
Morning's mirage, disdainful & calm
as a mirror,
held the shorn bush that yesterday
flourished,
now lopped canes & a scant spitfall
of remnance,
confetti trampled in the clefts
......
Ghazal Of The Better-Unbegun
by Heather McHugh
Too volatile, am I?too voluble?too much a word-person?
I blame the soup:I'm a primordially
stirred person.
Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.
The sound I make is sympathy's:sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
......
Departures: Chapter One
by Lisa Russ Spaar
Morning's mirage, disdainful & calm
as a mirror,
held the shorn bush that yesterday
flourished,
now lopped canes & a scant spitfall
of remnance,
confetti trampled in the clefts
......
Even The Rain
by Agha Shahid Ali
What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief's lottery, bought even the rain.
"our glosses / wanting in this world" "Can you remember?"
Anyone! "when we thought / the poets taught" even the rain?
After we died--That was it!--God left us in the dark.
And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain.
Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.
......
Tonight
by Agha Shahid Ali
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?
Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?
Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”
“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?
I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—
A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.
God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—
......
Ghazal
by Agha Shahid Ali
Feel the patient’s heart
Pounding—oh please, this once—
—JAMES MERRILL
I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time.
A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time.
Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hell-fire?
A former existence untold in real time ...
......
