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Wed 05 May 2010
Ghalib
By the poet Ghalib:
Ghazal 7
We never had the chance to meet our beloved
however long we lived we would live in longing
If we had lived for the promise of heaven we didn’t believe
had we we would have died in the joy of its word
Imagine what you think of as grief were a spark
from the vein of the stone would flow life’s blood
Who has seen the single face of the beloved
if one of us glimpsed her shadow she unravels
With questions of faith and thirsting ideals
they might call me a priest if I wasn’t a drunk
Ghazal 12
Not the blossom of song not the veil of music
I am the sound of my own breaking
You toy with the length of your dark curls
I am captive to my own dark thoughts
We brag to ourselves that we are different
this weakness has burdened our simple grief
Now you have come and I find myself bowing
this blessing a sadness this prayer a longing
I am a fragment sounding the dawn
you are the walls of my every echo
Ghazal 18
Come here I am suddenly restless for you
I am a coward impatient with waiting
The trade-off is paradise for my life in this world
but drunkenness never cures the hangover
Through a veil of tears I abandoned your party
like a child I’m unable to silence my weeping
My shudderings of thought no longer give joy
without flower blossoms the spring has no name
I have sworn myself off drinking again
but I’m known to break such resolutions
