Читать книгу Ghazal Games - Roger Sedarat - Страница 12

The Persian Poet’s Recipe for Qormeh Sabzi

Quick! Hide this ghazal deep in your Qur’an.

(Terrorists don’t understand the Qur’an.)

Would you eschew convention? Follow these

Lines to a place where truth, at its core, can

Enjamb ghazal couplets, proclaim an end

To Ramadan, and dine on the Qur’an.

Stew meat, spinach, onion, parsely, tareh,

Fenugreek, black-eyed peas, peppercorn and . . .

I know; I shouldn’t be making this. Not

The food, this ghazal game of the Qur’an.

Call me Cat in the Hat or Gorbeigh dar

Sabzi (cat in the stew) or a whore and

A hack, subverter of sacred causes.

Sentenced to sentences in the Qur’an,

I will surrender, eat the dish I’ve made,

Recite the ghazal hid in the Qur’an.

(I didn’t try to write it, the words came

The way the prophet transcribed the Qur’an.)

Pure agency, I arrive in Mecca

Both here and there: the world is my Qur’an.

Oh, Hallaj, your blaspheming the Qur’an

Affirms your close reading of the Qur’an.