The Chained Muse

The first true norther came today,
With raging gusts of wind and rain,
And blew the Summer heat away,
And with it all of passion’s pain.

Though others think that sudden chill
A harbinger of loss and death,
I feel a wild, soul-stirring thrill
In bleak November’s first c...

Truth has no need for empty praise

By those attired in scholar’s garb, 

So keenly with the microscopes

And scalpels of their intellects

Dissecting all her varied forms

And chaining them in epithets.

Serenely indifferent is she,

And goes about her changeless ways

With unrelenti...

A pin oak grips its leaves, long turned to brown
And hanging against the frosts and deepening chill,
Into December still it holds them on
When all the trees around have let them fall.

The envied flowers have gone for many a day
Whose beauty struck the solemn oak to sh...

Although known as a unique poetic form with roots in Arabia, the ghazal’s history suggests it is also a cultural phenomenon with an international and wide-ranging influence on cultures and languages, even religions, quite surprising for what is, after all, a form of po...

Full-blossoming moon! Here in thy light
Like flowing gold the ocean gleams;
As limpid as day, yet dimly bewitched,
Reposing across the expanse of the strand;
And in the bright blue, starless heavens
Hover the clouds of white,
Like colossal god-tableaus
Of luminous marb...

Fall rain, fall upon this old world,

And wake deep inside me the dreams

That I dreamt when I was a child,

When rain would wet the golden sand.

When the sultry summer breezes

Frolicked through the evening coolness

And the morning’s dewy leaves thawed,

When the crops shone a da...

When Horae’s icy sheets blanket the dale
And branches shed their frozen tears,
When Earth is covered with her icy veil,
We mortals run from Time’s cold sneers.

Yet let us not run from such cold deceived
As our tears turn to wintry pearls;

Let winter's denizens weather ea...

On the seashores of endless worlds, earth's children converge.
The infinite sky is motionless, the restless waters boisterous.
On the seashores of endless worlds earth's children gather to dance with joyous cries and pirouettes.
They build sand castles and play with ho...