Held in my heart, yet you are gone: a riddle.
Your voice heard in my thoughts, you don’t respond: a riddle.
Always the earth and sky are cleaved apart,
a bird’s swift shadow runs along the ground: a riddle.
The tide that rocks the womb-dark ocean cradle,
lullabies the stone-dead, distant moon: a riddle.
Migrant yellow warblers come each spring,
perform new lines to old, unwritten songs: a riddle.
My fingers interlace a tress of hair,
fall back, nobody’s there. I am alone: a riddle.
Flies congregate, announcing Death has come
to host a banquet honoring no one: a riddle.
Scouring your grimy pan to sheen, SuRa:
why do the things we touch become undone? A riddle.
by Surendriya Rao
—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
Tribute to the Ghazal
Surendriya Rao: “I am an American poet of Indian origin. I heard ghazals sung from a young age, but never thought of them as poetry. I thought of them as love songs, including some old Bollywood favorites, or ‘light classical’ music. It wasn’t until about seven years ago that a poet friend spoke to me about their work with the ghazal form and I was intrigued. Their work opened a route into the literary ghazal tradition for me, leading to and through Hafez, Ghalib, Hassan, and Iqbal, and then grappling with ghazal in English, including Aga Shahid Ali’s poems and his sometimes-uncompromising stance on translating the ghazal’s formal properties. The form feels a bit exotic to me (a Hindu child of the South Indian diaspora), given its entry into the Indian literary scene from Arabic and Persian antecedents and its rootedness in Islamic cultural spheres and contexts. I am aware of this outside/other self when writing ghazal poems, and I think this brings out different tendencies and sometimes pleasantly surprising results. There is a melancholic tendency of the ghazal that I find builds naturally even in English with the repetition of the qaafiyaa rhyme and radif refrain. I try to nod to the ghazal tradition of an unrequited lover as speaker by centering my work in ghazal forms around feelings like yearning, distance, absence, and grasping.” (web)
