Chapters 6 and 28 will be free this week. Please check the blog often for additional free chapters. The poems in chapter 6 are among some of my favorites. Here they are in their entirety:
To Aziz:
Song of Mohammed Ahram
Your beauty puts a barb into my soul
Strive as I will it never lets me go
My love has passed the frontiers of control
You are so fair and I desire you so.
Others may come and go, they are to me
But changing mirage, transient, untrue
My faithlessness is but fidelity
Since I am never faithful, but to you.
You are not kind to me, but many are
And all their kindness does not make them dear
It may be you deceive me when afar
Even as always, you torment me near.
Yet is your beauty so divine a thing
So irreplaceable, so haunting sweet
Against all reason, I am fain to fling
My life, my youth, myself beneath your feet.
Your beauty puts a barb into my soul
Strive as I will it never lets me go
My love has passed the frontiers of control
You are so fair and I desire you so.
Others may come and go, they are to me
But changing mirage, transient, untrue
My faithlessness is but fidelity
Since I am never faithful, but to you.
You are not kind to me, but many are
And all their kindness does not make them dear
It may be you deceive me when afar
Even as always, you torment me near.
Yet is your beauty so divine a thing
So irreplaceable, so haunting sweet
Against all reason, I am fain to fling
My life, my youth, myself beneath your feet.
Kashmiri Song
Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?
Whom do you lead on rapture's roadway far,
Before you agonise them in farewell?
Oh, pale dispensers of my Joys and Pains,
Holding the doors of Heaven and Hell,
How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins,
Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell.
Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat,
Crushing out life, than waving me farewell.
Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?
Whom do you lead on rapture's roadway far,
Before you agonise them in farewell?
Oh, pale dispensers of my Joys and Pains,
Holding the doors of Heaven and Hell,
How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins,
Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell.
Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat,
Crushing out life, than waving me farewell.
http://harriet.s.tripod.com/lhopepoetry.html
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