In Memory of Taha Husain. (a poem by Nizar Qabbani - written in November, 1973). ---------------------------- Light of your eyes I view, two stars may be / Among us all its you alone can see. Eons of years endured the words I bear / But through the smoke clouds can you see them there. Would we might sit together in some nook / and there the storehouse of our grief unlock. All ages shall be present then and known / for the writer each age in his own. Sir, you have made day out of night and all / the whole world a joyous festival. Youve seized the sun and on it you have thrown / the richly crimson garment thats your own. A river you, who gave us water sweet / and clothed us with the rose and marguerite. Like honey on my tongue the words you write / making the whole world drunken with delight. It is you unveild the soul, to penetrate / our moral darkness and our bankrupt state. The one who snatched the fire from heaven was you / and all times frontiers you have broken through. Now thoughts is changed to spurious politics / the man of letters plays a jesters tricks. Who knows whats now become of poetry / Its part delusion, part insanity. Return to us once more, for you can save / from the fierce and flood and overwhelming wave. You taught us to defy , to break the bars / and grind down to the dust the shining stars. We sloughed our skin, with our own hands tore down / the cosmos and its ramparts of hard stone. We spurned earths tyrants nor would bend the knee/ it idols and their false divinity. The soul is most oppressed and burdened when / it is the hands of cowards weild the pen.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:52:16 +0000
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