[Christine P'legion]

Originally Posted by Jim Moonan

My standard visual for reading ghazals is to imagine a disembodied head (not always the same one) coming into focus out of thin air in holographic profile reading aloud each sher/couplet in a dramatic, accentuated way and then floating out of view, making space for another disembodied head to make an appearance...

Rattle's latest issue was a "Tribute to Ghazals" and it was fascinating to read twenty of them in a row and see what different poets chose to do with the form. But your comment put me in mind of what poet Mary Keating wrote in her contributor notes:

I love how ghazals make the poet omniscient. I can view a subject from all points of view, all disconnected, but somehow connected. This is how I imagine God views the universe and all the lives passing through time. To me the ghazal is a microcosm of the vast machinations of temporal existence. Magically, we gain a better understanding of life when we read or write a ghazal.

I just love that.

Cameron, to get to your poem and the actual point of this thread -- I really like this, very much. It helped perhaps that I already knew what a Nocturnal House is (thank you, Roller Coaster Tycoon), but I don't think that spelling it out hinders the poem; it's the inversion of our [assumed] perspective that really makes it, and for that, it is helpful to have some idea of the context.

I agree with Yves's first comment that you may not need the final two shers. "Why do their eyes still follow us if not to glimpse / the life that's been denied them by our glass?" feels like a natural end-point. You've landed the plane; now let us take that away to chew on.