Vol. 8

After the rival took your hand in his and stole a kiss — I want death. Three stanzas of 'without you,' each stripping something further away, until existence itself becomes death.

It Is Beyond Me — Saadi's ghazal of love past the point of choice: the speaker cannot sit a single moment without the beloved, loves against the judgment of the whole world, and would drop the shield before the beloved's drawn sword.

Be joyful, O friends — I am glad and at ease; smell the fragrance of youth from my worn body; free from love's bondage, I have given away my heart; like the children on the road, I have walked longer but walk the same road.

I will bring you water, I will cook food for you — O companion, come with me, may the ruined house become inhabited; in the fort two pigeons sit, one shot while the other watches.

O my rose garden, my spring — the fire of your love burns my body; like a moth in hope of union I burned at your candle; your dark eyes and moon-like face take me from myself; day and night I pursue you.

From your grief, O darling, I resolve to travel — I turn my qibla another direction; I go carrying the brand of your cruelty; so no one else is deceived, I will raise a clamor everywhere about your grief.

I Have a Complaint — the formal lodging of a grievance, the beloved taken to account. The ghazal tradition's understanding that love gives the lover the right to complain.

If I am mad, where is my chain? If I am the prisoner of wisdom, where is its solution? A poem of spiritual paradox — the self interrogating its own nature and finding that neither madness nor reason fully accounts for what it is.