RPO -- Annie Finch : Ghazal For A Poetess

Annie Finch (1956-)

Ghazal For A Poetess

Many the nights that have passed,

But I remember

The river of pearls at Fez

And Seomar whom I loved.

Laurence Hope, 1903

1The corners of the frontispiece yellow from their darker edges.

2Aching eyes lift in tremolo from their darker edges.

3Moon lit your blood in the jasmine-blooming gardens;

4bodies still glide in tableau from their darker edges.

5Your "hungry soul" laps at the page with its "burning, burning";

6your moans send out an echo from their darker edges.

7Silk covers your arms, your fingers, your lips, your voice.

8Your black lines weave a trousseau from their darker edges.

9Wind strikes at the palm trees where you walked;

10fronds shake like tousled arrows from their darker edges.

11Your nights spread quiet over "parched and dreary" sand.

12Finches fill them till they glow from their darker edges.

Notes

1] ghazal: "species of Oriental lyric poetry, generally of an erotic nature, distinguished from other forms of Eastern verse by having a limited number of stanzas and by the recurrence of the same rhyme" (Oxford English Dictionary). Laurence Hope: pseudonym of the English-Indian poet, Adela Florence Cory (1865-1904).

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Annie Finch or Tupelo Press permissions department.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text:
Publication date note: Calendars (Dorset, Vermont: Tupelo Press, 2003): 37. Cornell University Library OLIN PS 3556
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition:
Recent editing: 1:2004/6/16

Composition date note: Composed 1999.

Other poems by Annie Finch