Two Ghazals

The ghazal is a poem comprised of autonomously closed couplets, wherein each stanza stands independently from others. A recurring rhyme followed by a repeated phrase concludes both lines of the first couplet as well as the second line of the remaining couplets. Typically, the convention calls for the poet or persona to include his or her name in the concluding couplet. Emerging in 7th Century Arabia, the form became especially well known through the verse of Persian poets such as Rumi and Hafez, making its way to later poets writing in Urdu such as Ghalib. It has been adopted by other poets writing in Hebrew, Turkish, German, Spanish, and English. The late Agha Shahid Ali did much to popularize the form in English, both through critical introduction as well as his own verse. In addition to the Persian masters, who I continue to translate with much humility, Shahid Ali's work has been a profound influence, as have the original ghazals and literary translations of Marilyn Hacker.

Hafez, a 14th century Sufi mystic, established himself as a master of the form. His ghazals, consistently numbered in all publications like Shakespeare's sonnets, paradoxically link the material to the spiritual world through rhyme and musicality. His poetry particularly excels at such wordplay as inventive metaphors and puns. It's almost impossible to overstate his importance to the Persian culture. Even the illiterate in contemporary Iran have memorized his verse, and his ghazals are sung and set to music. His divan (collected works) is opened at random by Iranians for daily guidance.