Ghazals

Ghazals (pronounced like “I guzzle wine because I am a poet”) are an Arabian form developed almost 1,500 years ago that came to prominence with the great Farsi poet Rumi in the 13^th century. Many poets also write ghazals in English because there are no syllabic rules, just that each line can stand alone and the rhyme scheme is followed. Heather McHugh, an American poet, wrote one of the most famous English-language ghazals, "Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun.

Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun

by Heather McHugh

A book is a suicide postponed.

--Cioran

Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person?

I blame the soup: I’m a primordially

stirred person.

Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.

The apparatus of his selves made an ab-

surd person.

The sound I make is sympathy’s: sad dogs are tied afar.

But howling I become and ever more un-

heard person.

I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.

The mirror’s not convincing—that at-best in-

ferred person.

As time’s revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.

Look in and what you see is one unholy

blurred person.

The only cure for birth one doesn’t love to contemplate.

Better to be an unsung song, an unoc-

curred person.

McHugh, you’ll be the death of me – each self and second studied!

Addressing you like this, I’m halfway to the

third person.