Sunlight: [Sunlight] Harvest -- Ghazal 524

Monday, July 12, 2010

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"Harvest"

As the sun goes down in its well,
lovers enter the seclusion of God.

Late at night we meet like thieves
who have stolen gold, our
candlelit faces.

A pawn has become a king.
We sit secretly inside presence
like a Turk in a tent among the Hindus,

and yet we're traveling past
a hundred watchmen, nightfaring,
drowned in an ocean of longing.

Sometimes a body rises to the surface
like Joseph coming out of his well
of abandonment to be the clarity

that divides Egypt's wheat fairly
and interprets the royal dreaming.

Some people say about human beings,
"Dust to dust", but can that be true of
one who changes from road dust to doorway?

The crop appears to be all one thing,
while it's still in the field.

Then a transformation-time arrives,
and we see how it is:
half chaff, half grain.

-- Ghazal (Ode) 524
Version by Coleman Barks
(from a translation by John Moyne)
"Say I Am You"
Maypop, 1994

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