Ghazals, glorious ghazals...

Totally Optional Prompts has been encouraging my ghazal habit! So here's one I prepared earlier (it won't be the last, I'm warning you...).

Ghazal - 'stone' radif

A heart that is broken will mend, but can end up a lot like a stone;
what is tender and fleshy is sweet, but will rot, not endure like a stone.
~
If the field that you sow in is bitter, the plough's blade will break as it turns,
the seed corn will wither and die there, and all you will crop will be stone.
~
"You'll have garnets and rubies, my darling, to drip from your fingers like wine,
but if blood's what you're after" he told her, "you'll not get a drop from this stone!"
~
The clay that lies cold in the earth comes to life in the potter's warm hands,
then fired in the hot kiln's red heart, the pot is as hard as a stone.
~
At night she would call to her lover, "I am here at the foot of the stair -
it's you that I want and you only, have mercy, I'm not made of stone!"
~
The old woman sat by the river, and smilingly held out a hand,
"Come cross over now, dear, with me; we'll hop over water and stone..."
~
"Open your hand, Lucy, show me, what you have there, your fingers curled tight!"
I yielded. "You lied, that's not treasure, all you have got is a stone!"


Oh, sod it, here's another.

Ghazal - 'mind' radif

Cracks and flaws in spirit, fears of error, conspire to shake the balance of a mind,
but shafts and shadows change as days move onwards, and sunlight's angle slants a cast of mind.
~
As cruel besetting soldiers hurl their torments at citizens inside the hungry walls,
so do the demons of the smaller hours, pelt their cruel jibes and taunts at besieged minds.
~
The day had turned from red to gold to silver, and found her long already on the road,
her eyes on hills ahead, the road before her, and never a backward glance to sway her mind.
~
I'd sit all day and watch the swallows flying, a whirl of life, quick fragments of the sky,
bursting from mudded nests, all streaming sunwards, a sight to quite entrance an earthbound mind.
~
Gone is the dried and gnawed-at bone of morning, the weariness of empty afternoon,
the deepening of twilight, wine's warm welcome, the drawing-in of night grants peace of mind.
~
You'll tussle with the words and thoughts and fancies, and seek elucidation of some kind,
but when will you admit and see the light,girl? You'll never find the answers in your mind!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and my moon radif ghazals were published on the Ghazal Page, here, and here. There really is a fantastic selection there, so please, poetical people, take some time to read some of them!