How does one describe a soul? By beauty, humour, grace?
Shining eyes? A glowy heart? A word once used was grace
So defines a gilded cage of manners, calm and poise
Time holds softly, by the throat, the ties that bind in grace
B’neath gentle shroud a flame arose, urgent and unseen
Flowing fire from lake to sea. Arcane divine … love’s grace
A thing of beauty shone between, each upon their shore
A tender glance, a heartfelt dance, this daydream trance: grace
But Fates hold fast to chosen paths, courage river-borne
As in the light b’came in the dark; suffering and, Grace
Too. Hard for those of bullish stars to speak, from the heart
Cast aside, she walked alone, relieved of all past grace
Not prepared to feel a fool, defences overrun
Swallowed time soon dulled her mind and left her without grace
So darkness fell upon her heart; forgott’n, left adrift
To never trust herself again, a wound requir’ing grace
What held great light cast equal dark, prism in your eye
Silence is a daily jail for those confined by grace
She knows the distance b’tween then and now, scars mark the path
To fall to ash, to rise again; Phoenix burned through Grace
Sadness is a gift, they say. No truer lie beheld
Cursed to reach forevermore, t’ward one devoid of grace
And there, the lowly troubadour, singing to herself
Forev’r lost but found within; enduring love for Grace
What is a ghazal?
Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the ghazal form has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet). A ghazal’s rhyming pattern may be described as AA BA CA DA and so on. Most ghazals have between five and fifteen couplets (bayts). The last couplet often includes a proper name (or nom de plume) of the poet. In the Persian tradition, each couplet was of the same meter and length.
A ghazal historically deals with topics of loss and love and has an interesting structure of ending each couplet with the same word or phrase. But rather than using the same word in a repetitive manner, it provides the opportunity to evoke different emotions or definitions from the same word. In my case I also used the word as a name (Grace), and for those of keen eye/ear, managed to sneak in a familiar Tragically Hip title too.
