Enlightened Perception

Cedar

An example of cedar wood

They enter the workshop and sense the familiar smell that sticks to their nose like soot: the wood
Aligned in lumber stacks, fresh off the cedar tree. They critique and strut the wood.

The mahogany knots swirl through the honey colored flesh, begging
To remain in their host. Their eyes are lost in the marks that glut the wood.

Their vision is swirling with their depth. They are intoxicated in their perfect imperfections,
The pulpy wine color that draws them in, envelopes them; they need nothing but the wood.

The rough edging kick starts their imagination: “what shall you be, my created
Yet uncreated work?” Whatever the cedar chooses, they shan’t rebut the wood.

They listen for guidance, but get none; they yearn for a lead, but silence is their gift;
They plead for insight, attention, anything at all. Yet who stays shut? The wood.

They’ve offered their time, their life, but the lumber in front of them doesn’t reconcile.
Finally a spark: “You were life, so you shall protect life. I’ll hut the wood.”

The boards enlightened them; the cedar boards would stand together, not alone,
As a house amidst the playful daffodils and sleek roses, out of which would jut the wood.

It will provide salvation in Paradise; a home for the feeble, the weak, the penniless.
In the blooming garden, the vibrant reds and yellows know what’s what: the wood.

The images flood their mind and their eyes. Cedar’s love for the helpless drives them to tears.
The Woodworker’s needs are obliterated. Now all that’s left is to cut the wood.

Week 9: Sufi Piety II – The Ghazal (love lyric) and Mathnawi (narrative epic)

Nearly every language and culture holds onto specific linguistic and literary icons that define it. Urdu and the ghazal are no different. The ghazal and its poetic form have been transmitted for centuries and still hold a prominent place in Pakistan and India to the point of evoking specific poems in Parliament to supplement an argument about of state reorganization (Naim 185-186). Thus, ghazals are held not only in high esteem but also widely used and practiced, leading to widespread familiarity with their form and message.

This message, whether written in a ghazal from the 14^th century or since the turn of the 21^st, often centers on a love story between an ambiguous suffering lover and a distant beloved representing God (Naim 190, Pietievich 3, de Bruijn 51-53). The story is set in a poetic framework that is comprised of “often semantically disconnected” couplets that follow a set rhyme scheme with repeated syllables near the end of the second line called the qafiyah with a repeated phrase, or radif, and a matla’, or repeated end-rhyme in the first couplet and often include a pen name of the author (Naim 186). Furthermore, ghazals usually incorporate different recurring atypical themes that range from drinking to questioning authority along with more modest tropes like gardens and birds. These poems culminate in the lover’s destruction in the beloved’s love and engage an alternation between existence and non-existence (Section 9).

In my piece “Cedar”, I employ the ghazal to represent an interpretation of the relationship between God and a lover onto that of an uncrafted stock of lumber and The Woodworker, my employed pen name for this poem. The qafiyah in my poem is seen with the sound “-ut” followed by “the wood”, which is the radif. The lover of the poem, The Woodworker, is referred to as “they” or “them” throughout the poem to maintain ambiguity and often engages in common ghazal tropes to align with true ghazal form. First, The Woodworker becomes intoxicated in the deliberately chosen wine-colored knots of the wood; he loses his self in the wood and is totally devoted to its existence, just as subjects in ghazals are often drunk in their love for God. Immediately after losing themself, The Woodworker goes through a period of frustration with the wood as it offers no insight into what its destiny is; rather, the wood stays shut up until the author finally has a spark of imagination. This mimics the suffering that ghazal subjects are usually put through by the beloved. Finally, The Woodworker hatches the idea to turn the wood into a shelter for the needy and falls in love with the idea; they will put the home in a garden of flowers and the love that will perpetuate from the wood ultimately destroys the author. Again, this destruction in love parallels the common ghazal theme of love for God and the beloved, and concludes in the lover’s destruction in the very love they have.

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