I learnt today that the full moon in April is called the “Budding Moon” or the “Paschal Moon”. We’re not quite there yet, but with spring finally surging from great cauliflower-heads of pink-white blossom, I wrote this ghazal on the theme.
(The ghazal, a Persian poetic form, is one of my favourites: it seems to me to blend some of the formal rigour of English verse – metre and rhyme – with the intense focus on image in Japanese verse forms: and there’s the devotional intensity the form insists upon as well.)
The Paschal Moon
A ghazal for April
When spirit quickens in the bough, what light falls from the Paschal Moon!
The winter’s veil glows gossamer, still yearning for the Paschal Moon!
The wine-thin veil is rent away, revealing plum-blush quandaries,
The soul that slumbered now must rise, nocturnes to sing this Paschal Moon.
But reeds that bend in spring’s first wind play music meant for other realms,
And frost-edged shadows – grateful - fail, return, implore the Paschal Moon.
This heart’s long winter yields at last to what it cannot comprehend,
While mystics trace the cyclic, boundless turning of the Paschal Moon.
Each hard-pressed seed inside the Earth must waken from its dormant state,
And She - till now in quiet rapt - stirs, burning for the Paschal Moon.
What sage could speak the silent words that Nature whispers to the soil?
The nightingale sings all her death-adjourning songs of Paschal Moon, so:
When spirit rustles in the bough, O Grahame, what long-planned mystic toil
Shall set us right, shall aptly praise the yearning, blushing Paschal Moon?