You played the old fool well, my love,
warmly greeting his son.
By night, Papa asleep, your warm
body’s treating his son.
“…the day is a wounded
boy” my adulterous father
raised like a pet, a half
brother unseating his son.
Real American crèche: Tony Jets
and his Shark virgin,
one dark breast exposed, Maria
unwed feeding his son.
“Because I want to live with
that dark child” my father said
to his mother at the hospital
on meeting his son.
My beautiful boy, “garden of
my agony,” he pined
waiting by the phone like a
spurned lover, needing his son.
Naked cowered the boy, father
to the man, beloved
Poppi’s strap “a battle of
raging bees” beating his son.
Father of my father “who gathers
your seed,” take me in
and stride the circus fairway
hand-in-hand leading his son.
Your dark boy sings in the backseat,
my “love between your teeth.”
Your husband? Who loves you but
won’t tell you’re cheating? His son.
Vronsky, you cut the dashing
figure, stole Karenin’s wife,
so sharp in your uniform, “your
cool waist” bleeding his son.
Crossing Broadway, his iPhone
“full of love and agony,”
helicopter father run over
while tweeting #His son.
I may be your namesake, Eugene,
but I have seen your rage
against me in the wild eyes
of Kronos eating his son.
First published in Contemporary Ghazals No.5, Spring 2015.
Published online in Poetry in Form, Jan. 22, 2017.
This ghazal is an ekphrastic poem inspired by Goya’s “Kronos Devouring One of his Sons.” In keeping with the Spanish inspiration, it samples phrases from Federico García Lorca’s last book of poems, Diván del Tamarit, a collection of gacelas and casidas (ghazals and qasidas). Just after finishing the book, Lorca was assassinated by Spanish Fascists. He was 38 years old. Several years later, Diván del Tamrit was published posthumously in Spanish and in translation. Its poems reflect not the form but the spirit of the ghazal and qasida, which Lorca knew only from Spanish translations of English translations.
While Lorca may not have had much reading experience with the ghazal, he had direct access to its spirit through his country’s Arabic-Muslim roots. Al-Andalus, or Islamic Iberia, began in 711 with the Berber invasion of Visigoth territories in Hispania. At its peak, it comprised Portugal and all but the northern quarter of Spain. Contrary to twenty-first century media images of Islamic culture, the Muslim conquest brought forth a golden age. “Moorish Al-Andalus was an advancement in human society,” writes Puerto Rican poet Victor Hernandez Cruz in the introduction to his recent book of poems, In the Shadow of Al-Andalus. Córdoba, the capital of Al-Andalus, became a great European center of progressive culture and learning where Muslims, Christians and Jews cooperated and lived together in peace. Muslim rule in some form existed in Iberia until 1492, when the sultan of Granada surrendered the Alhambra to Queen Isabella; that same year she sponsored Christopher Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic. Lorca understood that modern Spain, his Spain, began in Al-Andalus.
My ghazal tries to reflect the spirit of Diván del Tamarit by sampling phrases from several of its gacelas. Agha Shahid Ali employs this technique with Emily Dickinson in his ghazal “Call Me Ishmael Tonight.” My adaptation is ekphrastic in that it is a poetic response to Goya’s “Kronos Eating One of His Son’s.” I chose Goya because Lorca cites his art as a manifestation of duende. Without getting too deeply into it, suffice to say that duende is the deep feeling that infuses what Lorca considered the best Spanish art and true art in general. He knew that duende drew from Al-Andalus and Islamic Iberia’s sources deep in the heart of Muslim North Africa. I believe that this deep feeling manifests in the true ghazal in any language. It is more than melancholy and romantic love, which are easy. While the ghazal relishes humor, its devilish restrictions have little patience for easy feeling. Lorca emphasized that duende is not a form. I would add that duende results from the artist’s uncompromising struggle with form.