it's been a while since there was a poem. and i think i'm kind of proud of this one. so i'll post it. it's going to look stupid, mind you, because the window is too small. those of you who were asking me what a ghazal was can read this one instead of the horribly technical explanation i linked you to.
Love Like Salt
Ask what I can give you to savor like so much salt.
Ask me the value of my words; they are a world in salt.
A king asked his daughters how they loved him.
Gold, said one. Jewels, another. The last, salt.
This last one he banished. Though Grimm’s princess
cried pearls, her lashes crusted with salt.
The little girl’s magic salt cellar conjured salt for the world;
Without the magic words she threw it away; the ocean tastes of salt.
My darling, I only dreamt this, the robber bridegroom
hewed her fair body in pieces on a table, sprinkled them with salt.
A little boy sits silent in the woods, wishing.
He waits to sprinkle the magpie’s tail with salt.
The woodsman unable to kill Snow White cut out a boar’s
heart, brought it to the queen. She ate it with salt.
Lot fled Sodom, never looked back. Though he offered
his daughters to the mob, it is his wife who turned to salt.
The king, on a pilgrimage, stops at a peasant cottage,
Sits unknowingly at his daughter’s table, eats a meal without salt.
Lot’s daughters seduce him. Thus were both the daughters of Lot
with child by their father, the Dead Sea covering them with salt.
War and peace begin with the word melah,
the kingdom given over to David in a covenant of salt.
Ask me. Christina, what do you bring us? I come bearing
words on my back, the merchant’s donkey bearing precious salt.
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