POEM OF THE MONTH

First Heaven
The divinest new teacher has come to our school.
In a swirling of stars, I eclipse every rule.

As his brilliant dark look unblinds my mind's eye
To his heart-piercing question, I glow like a fool.

I am deaf to the end of his first lesson bell.
All the bells in my heart keep me fixed to the stool.

I must hand him my pages of error and shame
With the angels a choir in my ears, high and cool.

Though you're dazed by my radiance: striking its chord
Is his voice, humming Love is the key to it all.

To just drift these corridors - echoing, bright -
Where his presence has lingered, is blissful, is cruel.

O blue stocking, your long insight's lost in this dream
- But his beam can cut straight to your heart, like a jewel.

© Gareth Calway 1991
published in his first book "Coming Home" (King of Hearts Publications)

'This is a ghazal, or the nearest I can get to one in English. A ghazal is an Urdu love lyric originating in Persia, characterised by intense feeling, a tightly controlled metre and rhyme scheme and - if you get it right - "a complex interplay of heart and mind forces." I am using the schoolgirl crush as a metaphor for the immaturity but overwhelming sincerity of my own feelings for the Indian mystic Meher Baba.'