Here’s another old ghazal from the archives, slightly modified for flow and imagery. I’m starting to wonder how many of these I’ll end up resurrecting as I go through them. Note that this post is backlogged to the date the ghazal was actually written.
Phrases
Teens drive by in rides that thump out caustic phrases,
And yet nearby brown robins chirp out lyric phrases.
Calling from the minaret, a scowling prophet
Feigns to see with empty words in vatic phrases.
Winding, rippling in the wood and through the meadow,
Streams converge and weave to town with rustic phrases.
Shattered concrete, fallen bridges, broken towers:
Ravaged structures heard the call of seismic phrases.
Pooled in valleys, morning mists floats up the canyons—
Water rising from a lake of magic phrases.
Hiding deep in yellowed fabrics, cracked and tearing,
Wisdom fades into a scrap of relic phrases.
Bald eccentric maples stand by bony poplars;
Autumn shadows speak with dark and mystic phrases.
Shielding life, a veil of blue shuts out the heavens,
Then at night the curtain parts to cosmic phrases.
Call them pearls or gems or beads or what you fancy;
Still, the necklace forms a string of strophic phrases.
Relax, Zahhar, and just write ghazals till your done;
Countless thoughts can still be formed in distich phrases.
This is my 112th ghazal.
