POEMS

Marsiya
Husain of Karbala
-Ameen Khorasanee
Men weep for you today in many lands
And on their breasts in bitter anguish beat
And in sad, mournful tunes, the tales repeat of how you
Lost your family upon the sands
You nobly spurned the tyrant’s base demands and chose –
Death to prevent your soul’s defeat-
became a martyr with unflinching feet
.For these well may one weep who understands
This sorrow at your death, despite the years is still as fresh
Which Time has failed to quell.
In every heart this day new pain appears
And of your sufferings men each other tell
They see a vision through slow falling tears of that lone

From outside a
Muharram procession
-Tabish Khair

The clash of arms, the clasp of armour:
(Ya Hasan Ya Husain)
This is not sorrow, this is something else
This is defeat
That’s more than victory, this is
The past that’s passed by father to son
As a trinket heirloom without price
This is the inheritance of pain
There they whirl, bleeding, bleeding
(Ya Hasan, Ya Husain)
From wounds inflicted on other bodies
.And in another century
This is not war, this is women wailing
After the battle is over, after
The head is severed, mitred on a lance.
This is the knowledge of death
Passed on from mother to daughter.
(Ya Hasan, Ya Husain)
This is not religion, this
Is the exchange of unwrapped
Presents. This is a young boy feeling
With his father’s heart, this is
A pony-tailed girl speaking
With the voice of her mother
This is not anger, not even passion:
(Ya Hasan, Ya Husain).
This is dancing with the wound of time.
 
** Ya, an Arabic vocative or attention-getter, almost equivalent to English O, oh, or do