peotry is sissy stuff that rhymes - 2

The world of urdu poetry is one of wine-bearers and intoxication, of a ruby nectar that is both salvation and escape. Of imprisonment and exile, of jailors who keep both men and birds trapped in cages. Of gardens in bloom and others that are barren, of their gardeners, and also the souls and lovers to be found in them. Of luminous beauties around whom the poet and his rivals gather like moths, competing to bask in a warmth that leaves them scorched. Of love and desire, and the consequences thereof: separation, longing, and maybe union. And above all, there is the beloved, the poet's raison d'etre, the object of his devotion, a perfection who is fickle, indifferent, distant, who invariably spurns him, and who may be a courtesan, a teenage boy, or God.