Your Valentine?

Now available via the purchase page of this website priced £2.50 plus postage: a very tasteful 150 mm square art card under a plastic cover with envelope using my televised Persian ghazal 'My Valentine is a picture, her painted eye like a rose.' The eye occupies the entire front cover and the ghazal/love lyric is on the reverse. The poem got to the semi finals of the National Ghazal Competition as screened by Hindi Picture for Channel 4. Ghazals are accompanied by heartfelt music and sung in an Indian style, full of longing, but very beautiful. Just the job for a Valentine? I performed it as spoken word at Wolferton Folk Club last night, deep in the royal woods and with deer's eyes shining in the headlights on the way home.




My Valentine is a picture, her painted eye like a rose,
Her body held in a soft flame of stillness, freed in a pose.

My Valentine is a dancer, unfastened hair like a tide,
Her fingers fly out of time's rut: and pluck my heart as it blows.

My Valentine is a priestess, who trails her heaven scent
To hell and back round a navel the musk-deer* endlessly roves.

My Valentine is a goddess, her neck is softer than sky:
She turns to me like a planet, and everything else explodes.

O heart, this quest is your own end, you're lost and that's why you win,
You’re stripped of even your held breath and kiss what God alone knows.

*The Kasturi-mriga, a deer of the Himalayas whose navel yields musk.

FACING PAGE

with love.....

END NOTES


Room at the Gin productions: combining words, music, theatre and visual arts in a greater whole.

Tel: 01485 571828 (orders welcome) www.garethcalway.co.uk

Persian ghazal (lyric) © Gareth Calway 2013
Macro shot of eye by Barbara Humphries, used with permission.


Though the sophisticated scoff at those who drink the dregs
They will lose their faith when they arrive at the tavern door.
Hafez