Steffen Horstmann is a widely recognized poet and literary critic whose poems and book reviews have appeared in publications around the world, including Baltimore Review, Free State Review, Istanbul Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, San Antonio Review, Texas Poetry Journal, and Tiferet. Known for his mastery of the modern ghazal, he has published two acclaimed collections, Jalsaghar (2016) and Ujjain (2017). Horstmann has recently completed a new poetry book, Ellora, where he blends Eastern and Western sensibilities with mystical tones and spiritual explorations, creating a unique and evocative poetic voice.
Forever
Do you seek, like Jonah, to be elusive forever –
To live like an ascetic, reclusive forever?
You traversed deserts & abide in a mirage,
Within the shade of a fig & olive forever.
The temple scribe said you were fated to stray
In radiant absence, as wind lisps its narrative forever.
Sand rises around you, a volatile vacuum – O escape
To the mind's habitable star, fugitive forever.
In a vision you emerge from an emerald sea, immersed
In the light that pours through a cloud’s sieve forever.
Shahid, I left you sleeping in a bed of light – knowing
It was I you were destined to forgive forever.
Houses
Grief crushed me so
again and again it became
the pain that pain erases.
—Agha Shahid Ali
Houses in which bombs left empty spaces,
Their shattered mirrors haunted with faces.
You walk where there were gardens & parks,
Existing in your mind as cherished places.
Notes are whirling in a dove's throat, a song
Meant to pervade the world's darkest spaces.
You return to hear prayers recited at shrines,
As others speak of the pain only pain erases.
This where your mother's shadow billowed through
Sheets on a line – a memory's fleeting traces.
You are again troubled by the silence,
The dead calm in which a city braces.
Then the sudden flashes of explosions,
Figures running, shadows the light chases.
You have taken refuge in a house,
Its open ceiling the rain now graces.
Ghazal (Late at Night)
I wander streets we would walk at night,
Passing cafés where we'd talk at night.
We window-shopped – all signs read CLOSED –
Storefronts on avenues we'd walk at night.
The park bench where we'd sit until daylight ...
Where winds swayed trees as we would talk at night.
Footsteps beckoned shadows to each streetlight.
We ran past alleys a ghost would walk at night.
The songs of swallows began at first light.
A silence lived in our talk at night.
The collapse of hours, the morning light.
The sound of the sea, the boardwalk at night.
I still see you in a faded light.
You whisper in my ear, we talk at night.
Ghazal of Death
I live wary of my death inside me.
Does Fate query my death inside me?
I bear always the weight of its presence,
Burdened to carry my death inside me.
It sleeps like grain in a husk or sometimes
Rages like the sea – my death inside me.
It serves as tormentor or companion
With equal facility, my death inside me.
Sometimes I'm immersed in an absence
Composed wholly of my death inside me.
It may be instilled with repose
Or roused in fury, my death inside me.
What new form will it one day
Embody, my death inside me?
My own body's prophet summoned
From within my body, my death inside me.
Whom We Call Ishmael
after Agha Shahid Ali
Here there are ghosts none can repel tonight.
Rumors of the world's end none can dispel tonight.
In prisons the executions are beginning.
One hears prayers spoken from each cell tonight.
The enemy now approaches our city.
What outcome did the Oracle foretell tonight?
They are now among us, those demons
Who departed for Earth from Hell tonight.
In the temple only shadows bow in worship –
Without a priest to toll its knell tonight.
Tornadoes curve in descent, pulling down
A sky from which archangels fell tonight.
A moonlit terrace above deafened streets
Awaits the silhouette of Jezebel tonight.
You were comforted by the evening star, shining
Like a brilliant coin in the sacred well tonight.
We search for him whose words have guided us –
The Belov̩d Рwhom we call Ishmael tonight.
*These ghazals previously appeared in Steffen Horstmann’s collection Jalsgahar.
