The World Sinking Into Blood Poem by Muhammad Shanazar

There had been times,
When possibilities of the dawn emerged
In my world,
Life awoke from the slumber,
It seemed as if spring appeared in
The glade of my existence;
All were on the way to the mosques for prayers,
All around echoed
The announcements of the grandeur of God.
It seemed as if God himself came down
Upon the trees in the form of dew,
Bulbs on the poles began to put out by themselves,
The morn entered into the lanes with fresh hopes,
And whiteness of doves spread over in the sky.

The kids were stepping to schools,
The school bells by themselves jingled,
As if life sang a melody of love.
All went to the places of work,
The assiduous hand by itself was dignity,
Else the hell of belly
Would have discarded us from the Eden.

It is an old tradition to strive till morning
And then again till evening is as hard as to dig out
A mountain for an aqueduct of milk,
We grew more thankful to God Almighty.
In my world of love there had been celebrations
Of science, art and literature
For thousands of years, in the sleeping chambers
Bells of loyalty used to jingle;
All sang every day the same soul stirring song
Of life, on the same tone and the same rhythm,
So life attained shine and flow of continuity.

Then all of sudden it happened
In my rosy world of clours,
An atmosphere of depression invaded on the walls,
Patios and porches;
And death collided again the dream of life,
Since then, till today it has become a routine.
The lamps of life are blown out as soon as the night
Falls, and each event is attributed to the rotation
Of days and nights.
The winds are atrocious in such a way as
They have blown out, one by one, all of my lamps,
And my mind has befuddled
On the route of radiance.
We don’t have any complaint against the breeze
When the gale has begun to blow,
All possibilities of understandings have vanished
From the brain, all lamps of life
Have been blown out on the walls,
In patios and porches.
Today, all around is splattered the blood of desires,
And the sacred substance of human streams
In each nook and corner.
Now who wishes for whom,
And who urges for whom,
The caravan of life at each step is being robbed of,
And weeps like a peahen while looking at her feet,
It is just passing on like the life of a money lender.
Again somewhere a bullet went off
And someone has been killed,
Again some explosion claimed several lamps of life,
But the killers will not be traced.
All of sudden TV stopped on “Breaking News”
Lips of the news reader dried up,
The azans have clogged when a bomb exploded
In the mosque,
What kind of turban of prestige it is,
What kind of comfort of understanding it is,
How life should escape from the adversities.
The smoke of science and philosophy
Rises from the library,
As if the sun of life of someone again has doused,
The wind of pain again has settled all around.
Thorns and thistles have drunk the blood of
Fragrant flowers, again the light got buried
Under the debris of negritude, again
Some moon waned, again some sun set down.
One body has been buried;
The second funeral is being lead to the graveyard,
Again from some home
What kind of noise arose all of sudden,
All songs of life have changed into elegies,
I think someone’s brothers have gone
Into the lap of death.
The pulses sink, the heart sets down.
O! My God make me understand
Why the heart is restless though
I praise you reiterating Your Great Attribute,
All flowers have faded;
There is fire in the lawns and lanes,
From this end to the farther one,
Only one spectacle prevails,
Aorta of each flower in under the dagger of death,
The vultures hover in the sky in the place of doves,
The light of the moon of time has faded,
And the crows have drunk
All luminosity of the sea of light.
On the highway of life there rules death,
All around is overspread lunacy of the vehicles,
No one knows whose tyres have drunk blood
Of how many human beings.
All around is extended
The scorching sunshine of indifference,
Pulsations of all hearts are in the dale of death,
We don’t know whose treasure of delights
Is hidden in our perdition.
O Friend! Now life is the rhyme of that ghazal,
Which has been devoured at last
By the cruel rhythm of “Peace”.
Think awhile what lessen imparts
The divine religion, dead bodies
And blood are scattered, splattered all around,
Seeing the spectacles my eyes have become stones.
Lo! Monsters occupy the shoulders of Iblis,
I hear the hooting of ambulances from all around,
The pulses of melodies being sung,
Sink into the roar.
Ah! Again today several will lie in their graves,
The politics of compromises have taught us
A lesson very strange that is why
The police hide while they see the slayers.
The utter dark has snatched our light,
We were quite unacquainted with
Such ways to be ruled as these are.
The sovereigns have least knowledge
Of the killing hands, their eyes contain nothing
Except the contents of sludge.
The rite of carnage is in the vogue everywhere,
The unit of spies is now of the opinion,
“It is impossible to locate the killers”.
The rulers are inefficient,
They rule but without brains.
The police have to entrust the task to the spy dogs,
So that they should fetch gloves of the killers,
And a few lost fictitious contents too,
They should find from somewhere
A head of some suicide-bomber,
Or some clues of the killers to found
The basis of investigation.
The blood of human being says lamenting,
“This is the world where as soon as
The sun sets every day,
Iblis dances under the flag of evils”.

Written by Ronaq Hayyat
Translated by Muhammad Shanazar