Apr 13, 2017 NaPoWriMo, Original Poetry

Nearly Cut
©April 13th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram

You gazed at her across the dancing veil of her life
And you found yourself dancing on the blade of a knife

It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but your fear of falling.

Did you think that when your pale shadow touched her shadow
That she would forget herself, that her weakness would show?

It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but your fear that’s calling.

Yes, she did forget herself, but her shadow was strong.
She would not cut it away from her, and you were wrong.

It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but the fear of crawling.

She lived in the light, you in the heart of illusion
What did you hope to gain from her near-dissolution?

It’s not the knife-wound that hurts, but failure that’s galling.
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Today’s poem is an exercise in a form I’ve never tried before: The “ghazal.” I have my misgivings about it, since it’s a form of Urdu poetry/song, and it seems strange to try and import that into English, but hey! Might as well try it. My couplets have a 13-syllable count per line for no reason other than that I wanted it to be so. And there’s a refrain, with a modified ending for each time it repeats.

Today’s Day 13 NaPoWriMo 2017 prompt reads, in part:

Today’s is an oldie-but-a-goody: the ghazal. The form was originally developed in Arabic and Persian poetry, but has become increasingly used in English, after being popularized by poets including Agha Shahid Ali. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lined of the first couplet end with the same phrae or end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet.  

Tags: #Ghazal, #OriginalPoetrybyVijayaSundaram, #UnrequitedLove