Today’s poem is “In Arabic” by Agha Shahid Ali from the collection Call Me Ishmael Tonight, A Book of Ghazals. The book is available for purchase here.
In Arabic by Agha Shahid Ali (with revisions of some couplets of “Arabic”) A language of loss? I have some business in Arabic. Love letters: calligraphy pitiless in Arabic. At an exhibit of miniatures, what Kashmiri hairs! Each paisley inked into a golden tress in Arabic. This much fuss about a language I don’t know? So one day perfume from a dress may let you digress in Arabic. A “Guide for the Perplexed” was written—believe me— by Cordoba’s Jew—Maimonides—in Arabic. Majnoon, by stopped caravans, rips his collars, cries “Laila!” Pain translated is O! much more—not less—in Arabic. Writes Shammas: Memory, no longer confused, now is a homeland— his two languages a Hebrew caress in Arabic. When Lorca died, they left the balconies open and saw: On the sea his qasidas stitched seamless in Arabic. In the Veiled One’s harem, an adulteress hanged by eunuchs— So the rank mirrors revealed to Borges in Arabic. Ah, bisexual Heaven: wide-eyed houris and immortal youths! To your each desire they say Yes! O Yes! in Arabic. For that excess of sibilance, the last Apocalypse, so pressing those three forms of S in Arabic. I too, O Amichai, saw everything, just like you did— In Death. In Hebrew. And (please let me stress) in Arabic. They ask me to tell them what Shahid means: Listen, listen: It means “The Beloved” in Persian, “witness” in Arabic.
Prompts:
1. Begin with “a language of loss…” 2. Begin with “this much fuss about…” 3. Draft a poem that includes foreign words and specific names. 4. Draft a poem in the form of a ghazal. To learn more about ghazals, click here.
5. Photo by Photo by Berk Ozdemir. Use the image as a writing prompt.
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