Ghazal

Ghazal

for Triin

Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant. —  Martin Heidegger

The wind caresses me in the winter of the night with the nearness of the distant,
while memory wraps me, warmly, like a blanket of wool, with  the nearness of the distant.

Your eyes: grey stars , a pallor in the darkness that leads me through the absence,
a chiaroscuro, an unfolding of shadows, where I meet you in the nearness of the distant.

There, standing with the crows, your hair windswept with the color of the wheat,
I walk alongside you through the forest of the trees of moss in the nearness of the distant.

A great, golden spire rises up out of the fog, and a snow lays lazily on rooftops.
A sea embraces a sleepy fishing village as my windmills turn in the nearness of the distant.

The wind caresses me in the winter of the night, and yet I hear the singing of bees.
I am the sparrow caged by the snow laden limbs of its tree, but  I will meet you—always,
In the nearness of the distant.

Charles Coakley Simpson