camels dUly UndUlate

is for Urjuzah

That is an Arabic verse form, and it means couplets written in the rajaz meter.  The rajaz meter is lines written in two parts (or hemistich) of 12 syllables each with a break in between.  But we’re not done yet, there is a further twist. Each half-line of 12 syllables has three parts of 4 syllables each, with the third syllable unstressed and the other three stressed. 

Arabic and Persian poetry have many common features, and have fed into each other over centuries and influenced the poetic soups of the Indian subcontinent in many ways. Both languages had rigid rules about syllable counts and meters and feet which is a little different from contemporary poetry.

I have read that the rajaz is a meter that mimics the simple gait of camels across the deserts of Arabia, a bit fanciful, but hey, we are talking poetry here.  Fanciful goes.

Here’s my version of the Urjuzah:

Small moves

So many things I need to write, make clear or note

But you come in and I forget all pending jobs

I watch your face lit by the lamp, your shirtless throat

my pen just writes one crooked line, trails off and drops;

much of the time I make do fine with just your thought

much of the time the pens can stick to rules and daub

each verse and word correctly lined, amazed or not

what can be done if you come in? And so they stop.

A pulse point beats at my forehead, yours is a knot.

Exquisite breath, drawn in expelled in firefly strobe;

who’ll mark the one who sits and waits, carefully jots

all common things? No-one is keen to see them cope.

Caravans wait, outside the tents the loads are brought

and strapped on backs, hard trips and long, around the globe.

I too must move, though mine is small, loops on a spot

and poems to form on rhythms of winds, dust, dunes and slope.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge.