3 (More) Ghazals

Happy Saturday all. Here are three more ghazals for your reading pleasure, written over the past few days. I'm really happy this sequence is continuing to move along, & I've been very gratified by readers' responses. Right now I'm going by the theory "write 'em fast, revise 'em fast;" actually that has been my theory for awhile. I recall that Thomas Hardy said something to the effect that a poem loses "its freshness" after a couple of revisions. Of course, like any rule, that one's just begging to be broken, but in general it works for me.

Hope you enjoy them.


“the rain is as classical as ever”

what else is like rain at 5 a m on the green tin roof a
marimba clucking a pentatonic scale under wool

mallets doesn’t cut it a clarinet in the backroom chirping
descending thirds doesn’t cut it an upright bass groaning chromatic

blues lines is not it—the coffee still steeping in the presspot
the mild embarassement of dressing in the kitchen when only the

cows are lowing dark in dark pastures—so exposed
to no one with memories of the Greek alphabet carved in stone as the           rain-

drops carve stones on the cliffs above Bodega Bay where the
gulls dip thru the mist & it’s last November & I could be

anywhere the rain drips on the green roof at 5 a m—
the tide pools awash in the surf off Lincoln City the

rain descending in sheets like extended chords
sounding crisp & without any sustain—a dish of

ravioli swimming in marinara a white
tablecloth—dressing in the dark as the coffee steeps ex-

posed a classical guitar left out on the
green tin roof in the rain & I could be singing


(title quote from Anne Waldman’s Holy City)


Ghazal 4/29

at 5:00 a m the stars are suspended raindrops thru the kitchen
window is there any sound in the smothered velvet air the

cascade of one semi southerly down the highway a huge exhalation a
transistor radio crackling a Red Sox game thru a

Rockingham VT hemlock green spring evening a screened-in porch in
1966 listening to balls & strikes with a man whose breathing was

labored—he did sit quiet in hemlock green air rising from the green
Connecticut River the house built into a hill it had hemlock green

trim—the new moon’s velvet dark this morning around the teardrop
constellations—a baseball scudding into leftfield at a park in

San Francisco a honeydew green spring morning 1996 the
memory of April air—the silence of baseball punctuated with the

report of a bat the silence of listening punctuated with a
wheeze a rale a cough—the stoic crying velvet morning sky


Ghazal 5-1


when stars flowered white & green & shattered to
constellations blooming over Indian Mountain as yet the summit

invisible in a sky that could be night tho it’s morning the
red roses brimming across a white pergola a white sun dress a

porcelain Blessed Virgin—the Joshua Trees’ white flowers
flowering thru shattered Owens Valley the

history of water in the city of angels etched into dry lakes the
stars’ petals unfurled along an invisible ridgeline—white roses for

innocence—hailstones pelting the driveway yesterday morning a
water glass smashed to constellations & orange

roses equal desire & lavendar roses for love at
first sight Dante’s for instance—stars blossomed lavendar white red a

Joshua Tree’s hunchbacked bouquets conferred whitely a
boarded-up diner’s windows shattered to constellations a pink gem-

stone rosary my father carried in wartime a porcelain Virgin—the
stars blooming white & yellow thru this sky’s

black waters tho it’s morning somewhere tho not here the
yellow stars shattered tho yellow roses say goodbye

John Hayes
© 2009