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last update:
 
27 Jan24

Mimi Khalvati photo e-mail Mimi
Mimi Khalvati website
 
Mimi at Desperado Literature
 
listen to poem
The Valley
 

poetry favourites:
Arvon Foundation
British Council
Carcanet
Poetry School
Smith|Doorstop

 

and shop elsewhere…
pamphlet (forthcoming) –
“Very Selected Poems” Smith|Doorstop;
 
collections –
“The Weather Wheel”,
“Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011”,
“The Meanest Flower”,
“The Chine”,
“Entries on Light”,
“Mirrorwork”,
and
“In White Ink”,
Carcanet
 

 

 

Mimi Khalvati awarded the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, 2023.

 

 

Ghazal
   after Hafez

However large earth’s garden, mine’s enough.
One rose and the shade of a vine’s enough.
 
I don’t want more wealth, I don’t need more lies.
In the dregs of a glass, truth shines enough.
 
What can Paradise offer us beggars
And fools? What ecstasy, when wine’s enough?
 
Come and sit by the stream. Rivers run dry
But to carry their song, a chine’s enough.
 
For a poet drowned in a world of books,
Any book with a broken spine’s enough.
 
When you’re here, my love, what more could I want?
Just mentioning love in a line’s enough.
 
Heaven can wait. Since you opened the gate,
No heaven however divine’s enough.
 
I’ve no grounds for complaint. As Hafez says,
Isn’t a ghazal that he signs enough?
 

Mimi Khalvati

in collection The Meanest Flower, 2007, Carcanet,
ISBN 978-1-8575486-8-6