Ghazal Quotes

ghazal that he had heard Saeeda Bai sing, but, oddly, ~ Vikram Seth

PARTITION'

are your drains clean of blood now?
do you recall the names, and faces
of your own people?

did your countrymen get to die
right like human beings?

butchered sisters and mothers
still wait by the windows,
with no lantern.

that was no proper farewell
past midnight.
minarets whisper your ghazals
to an empty sky,
Koklass' know the borders too.

what have you done, sir? ~ Abhijit Sarmah

The world's longest, as far as I know, ghazal ("Bowls of Food") in its wandering wonders what's hidden in language, in the talk of plants, and in the moment, which, it says, is an embryo inside an eggshell that shatters into birth to become birdsong, and God! Such an astonishing image for the transformative edge of the present. ~ Coleman Barks

She had been hesitant the first night, right before she had launched into him like a wild animal. The imprint of her violence had lasted on him well until the morning and while he had been hurt, he had loved the fact that she was into him, that she lusted after him fanatically, that she scratched him, wept on him, bit him and he was grateful that she let him see her like that: unhinged, throbbing and warm-skinned. She was powerful and thus ironically all the more defenceless in surrender. At times he felt as though she truly hated him, hated him for making her feel like this, for having to condescend herself just by wanting him. He felt as though she was warning him constantly through her seething, hurtling silence; to not let her down after she had disclosed so much of her soul to him. Her insecurities, her memories, her fetishes, her scent, her limbs; they had all been laid-bare in front of him and as he lay there next to the girl whose chest heaved and fell like the meter of a ghazal, he fell in love with that girl and her bundle of contradictions.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') ~ Kunal Sen

In the Middle Ages, the troubadour poets invented the concept of courtly love
a fantasy love, a noble passion, which was also extra-marital and thus inevitably thwarted, illicit, adulterous. One of the medieval terms for it was amour honestus (honest love). I've always wondered why this passionate ideal
masochistic, spiritual-travelled with such wildfire throughout Europe. My poem, a ghazal, takes up the subject. ~ Edward Hirsch

Touch my song with your lips, make it immortal,
be my beloved, make my love immortal.
No restriction of age, not the bond of lives,
when someone love should see only the soul,
by carving new trend, make the trend immortal.
Loneliness of the sky is in my lone heart,
with rattleing paayal enter into my life,
by giving own breaths make the music immortal
make the music immortal, make my song immortal.
World snatched from me, whatever was beloved to me,
all won from me, I lost at every moment,
by losing your heart you make my victory immortal.
written By Honthon Se Chhoo Lo Tum - Jagjit Singh ~ Nirav Sanchaniya

Ghazal !يا لطيف (Ya Lateef!)
- 1942-

A lot more malaise and a little more grief every day,
aware that all seasons, the stormy, the sunlit, are brief every day.

I don't know the name of the hundredth drowned child, just the names
of the oligarchs trampling the green, eating beef every day,

while luminous creatures flick, stymied, above and around
the plastic detritus that's piling up over the reef every day.

A tiny white cup of black coffee in afternoon shade,
while an oud or a sax plays brings breath and relief every day.

Another beginning, no useful conclusion in sight‚ -
another first draft that I tear out and add to the sheaf every day.

One name, three-in-one, ninety-nine, or a matrix of tales
that are one story only, well-springs of belief every day.

But I wake before dawn to read news that arrived overnight
on a minuscule screen , and exclaim يا لطيف every day. ~ Marilyn Hacker

And by then I had understood that any ghazal that could not pierce your heart completely and instantly, like an arrow, had no value as a work of art. ~ Rabisankar Bal

They are yours, but you don't understand them," snapped Reza. "Only Adam was given true intellect, and only the banu adam have the power to call things by their right names. What you call the bird king and the hind and the stag - these are only symbols to disguise a hidden message, just as a poet may write a ghazal about a toothless lion to criticize a weak king. Hidden in your stories is the secret power of the unseen." The stories are their own message, said the thing, with something like a sigh. That's the secret. ~ G. Willow Wilson

Whatever happens, happens for the best.' That's how any domestic counselling starts in a Marathi family. Everyone in every family has an inner psychiatrist who rises to the occasion with some home-made mottos, a few lines from Jagjit Singh ghazal. An older generation may quote Tukaram but underlying all this is the bedrock phase: Whatever happens, happens for the best. ~ Sachin Kundalkar