Home » Writing » Rizwan Akhtar – Poet » Ghazal: Soul’s Food – Rizwan Akhtar

Ghazal: Soul’s Food – Rizwan Akhtar

Ghazal: Soul’s Food

In love fever/separation kills.

Finding her/would ease the burning. Ibn Arabi

The last Apostle said about his first spouse “Khadijah is my soul’s food”

this could be a word a Lover cares to say to his Beloved for soul’s food.

Those who are distracted by ways of the world need to wake and brood

Can everyone touch the pinnacle and bear the hard labor for soul’s food

Oh! the body winces desires eyes search for that touch hands preclude

Those who cannot mix the ingredients will never relish the souls’ food

in a dark room I mumble making my tongue a chaplet, verses’ feud—

a deep battle forces me a scimitar piercing bodies; a kind of soul’s food.

On a hirsute chest you laid down your cheeks & the balm it exudes

Mir’s desolation, Ghalib’s conundrums, Faiz’ yeaning—all soul’s food.

Let me see if I can look for you like Orpheus wandering in sad mood

Eurydice could have found him but how gods snatched his soul’s food

eyes down Jibril says “O messenger Khadijah comes with a bowl of food”

After she passed away came the year of grief  he fed on her souls’ food

the letter you wrote to me is save in a closet; and the poet too pursued

all words of amour making you a perfect muse ingesting soul’s food

staggering alone in the English winters covered in a leather and hood

a Shahrazad in a Ghazal in English on a flying carpet for her soul’s food

Beloved the poet will return to have a feast in another realm renewed

till then recite and prostrate on a rug with a Green dome- have soul’s food!

Inside The Royal Mosque we could have seen relics of The last Apostle

where souls converge after The Call for Prayer fasting with soul’s food

The last Apostle said about his first spouse “Khadijah is my soul’s food”

This could be a word a Lover cares to say to his Beloved for soul’s food.

Rizwan Akhtar, April, 2021

This section: Pat's Home Page Blog, Poetry, Rizwan Akhtar – Poet, stories and poems, Writing