Friday, July 20, 2012

Two Poems for Ramadan

Prayer Rug

Thank you Poetry Foundation. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Prayer Rug

By Agha Shahid Ali
Those intervals   
between the day’s   
five calls to prayer

the women of the house   
pulling thick threads   
through vegetables

rosaries of ginger   
of rustling peppers
in autumn drying for winter

in those intervals this rug   
part of Grandma’s dowry   
folded

so the Devil’s shadow   
would not desecrate   
Mecca scarlet-woven

with minarets of gold   
but then the sunset   
call to prayer

the servants
their straw mats unrolled   
praying or in the garden

in summer on grass   
the children wanting   
the prayers to end

the women’s foreheads   
touching Abraham’s   
silk stone of sacrifice

black stone descended   
from Heaven
the pilgrims in white circling it

this year my grandmother   
also a pilgrim   
in Mecca she weeps

as the stone is unveiled   
she weeps holding on   
to the pillars


(for Begum Zafar Ali) 
 

Different Ways to Pray

By Naomi Shihab Nye
There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,   
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow   
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long   
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,   
and were happy in spite of the pain,   
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen   
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.   
When they arrived at Mecca   
they would circle the holy places,   
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,   
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,   
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America.   
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
      Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones.   
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,   
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,   
and was famous for his laugh.
 

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