Vol. 2

You are not of this city — the beloved identified as someone apart from the ordinary world, whose presence makes the ordinary city strange by contrast.

The air of your love will not leave my head — whoever came to your door will not leave again. A midnight song: the tryst where she said she would not travel without us; the tavern that offers shelter until dawn.

If spring were to come — a conditional reunion poem, spring used as the figure for the beloved's return and the renewal she would bring to a world that has gone cold without her.

You were my first love — the particular weight of what comes first, the love that calibrates all subsequent experience. A recording of origin and original loss.

You Made My Heart Bleed — the beloved's unfaithfulness or cruelty named directly, without the mediation of elaborate metaphor. One of his most emotionally unguarded recordings.

May my feet be cut off if they go to her house — the oath of non-return, the broken covenant, the resolve: even if she falls at my feet and says have mercy, I will not bow again.

No companion other than you — the radical exclusivity of the ghazal's devotion. The beloved as the only possible companion in a world that has otherwise receded.

O my good beloved, O faithful one — I want you, I ask for nothing but you from God. Though I say in words that I do not love you, my heart secretly always calls: I want you.

O my soul is your prisoner, my life is a sacrifice for you — wandering scattered like a lock of hair in your wake. Neither lucky enough for one night of union nor strong enough to flee cruelty for a single day.