ANAR (Issath Rehana Mohamed Azeem )

ANAR (Issath Rehana Mohamed Azeem ) Poems

ANAR (Issath Rehana Mohamed Azeem ) Biography

Anar (Issath Rehana Mohamed Azeem) has been writing poetry in Tamil since the 1990s. Her works include Oviem Varaiyathe Thurikai, Enakkuk Kavithai Mukam, Perunkadal Podukiren, Utal Paccai Vaanam & Potupotuththa Mazhaiththooththal (a collection of Tamil folk songs from Sri Lanka) . Several of her poems have been translated into English and have appeared in journals. Her books have won several awards, most notably the Government of Sri Lanka's National Literature Award, the Tamil Literary Garden’s (Canada) Poetry Award, the Vijay TV Excellence in the Field of Literature (Sigaram Thotta Pengal) Award and Sparrow Literature Award. Anar writes regularly on her blog, anarsrilanka.blogspot.com. She lives with her husband and son in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka at Sainthamaruthu.)

The Best Poem Of ANAR (Issath Rehana Mohamed Azeem )

A Few Additional Blood-Notes

Though used to seeing blood
regularly every month,
I am still shocked and flustered
when my child runs to me howling
with a slashed finger.
As though I am seeing it now for the first time,
this blood, expressing helplessness,
craves my compassion - and distress.
Blood from a raped woman, though,
might grow cold and drip
like the revolting blood
from a dead wasp's carcass; or flow
in the sticky, moist colour of her life.
Blood pours
from the body of a murdered child
quite silently,
quite innocently.
Those who shed the most blood
and those who caused the most
bloodshed on the battlefield
have been honoured by our leaders,
promoted to high positions.
Feelings of the supplicant human soul
under intense punishment
have hurled themselves and shattered
on the blood-stained walls
of torture camps.
The blood scent of vengeance,
the blood stench of predation,
the same blood that congeals on the crazed streets,
the same blood that has seeped and dried on the walls of mausoleums…
as death's indelible traces,
they stalk me endlessly.

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