It's My Birthday And I'll Write A Ghazal If I Want To

My other half

My other half is a picture, her painted eye like a rose,
Her body held in a soft flame of stillness, freed in a pose.

My other half is a dancer, unfastened hair like a tide,
Her fingers fly out of time's rut: and pluck my heart as it blows.

My other half is a priestess who trails her heaven scent
To hell and back round a navel the musk-deer* endlessly roves.

My other half is a goddess, whose neck is softer than sky,
She turns to me like a planet, and everything else explodes.

O h(e)art, this quest is your own end, you're lost and that's why you win,
You’re stripped of even your held breath and kiss what God alone knows.


*The Kasturi-mriga, a deer of the Himalayas whose navel yields musk.



Notes. This is a ghazal, an Indian love-lyric: it ought to be in Urdu but this is the best I can do in English. The form is said to have inspired the Renaissance Italian sonnet from its base in the nightingale and garden culture of Persia at a time when the Arabs were teaching us - among other things - chivalry towards women. The quest of the hart/ heart through the forest as an allegory of a lover's pursuit of the beloved is about as courtly French romance as you get though and this one is included in my Arthurian play for teenagers. I saw a deer at close quarters in the fields outside our cottage today: it should not have been there but I'm awfully glad it was.