Poem: A Lover's Recourse (connivance)

connivence / connivance

There is something double in me that loves a mirror.
I can tell its age only by looking in the mirror.

If you do not exist, I would have to invent you,
my rival, my accomplice, my envy, my mirror.

Not that the fire engine is anything like the fire,
but as the day is to the night, to me the mirror.

Sure you can handle me sleeping in your place again?
I hear him in your words. I see him in your mirror.

You look Chinese, black hair, dark eyes, smooth chin, and slim.
Right cannot be told from left—or wrong—in this mirror.

His first love was a Filipino priest in church,
Mine a white physicist. Our past is smoke and mirrors.

You speak so freely of a past I do not share.
Know you are in Jee’s looks, his eyes, his sights, his mirror.

Comments

Jee, your ghazals are getting nicer and nicer. This one has the subtlety I'd read or hear in ghazals of ghalib and mir... I am contemplating writing ghazal myself, at least learn to write. Of course, i'd want to adopt a pen name for that first (someone told me in urdu Nabina means one-eyed, ha!)... good work here.
Jee Leong said…
Thanks for coming back to these ghazals again, Nabina.
Anonymous said…
They are all good, but this one is particularly good! The subject is perfoect for the ghazal form. And the stanzas get progressively stronger digging into the conceit.

Rick
Jee Leong said…
Thanks, Rick.

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Thumboo's "Ulysses by the Merlion"

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC