Five Poems by Nasir Aijaz
The Vengeance
Through the smoke of *Miani’s plain,
Came the echo of sorrow and pain.
Cannons roared and brave hearts fell,
In the fire and thunder’s spell.
But we chose not hatred or war,
Not revenge for the wounds we bore.
Instead we planted seeds of peace,
Praying the grief and tears would cease.
Now where blood once stained the land,
Red roses bloom across the sand.
And in the silence, soft and deep,
The souls of the fallen gently sleep.
For the last hundred and eighty-three years,
We have not sought the vengeance that keeps us all bound.
Instead, we planted the seeds of love
And watched them grow into roses.
Now the thorns of conflict lie buried deep.
*Miani – Once the battlefield and now known for cultivating roses in Sindh province of Pakistan. This is the place where the Sindhi army battled the British colonial force to save the motherland in Feb 1843.
*****
Universal Goodwill
Our path is ours, and ours alone…
In no race do we run,
With no rival are we one
No envy stirs within our breast,
In no comparison do we rest.
We wish no ill, we seek no foe,
No seeds of malice do we sow.
With no one do we hold a grudge,
By no one’s standard do we judge.
Our path is ours, and ours alone.
*****
Learn to coexist in peace
Under one sky, unbroken and wide,
Where the blue expanse knows nothing of our maps,
And the horizon holds no fences, only light,
We stand divided by the artificial borders
And the lines we drew ourselves.
The wind drifts through the wire without a pause,
Crossing the borders without a passport,
Whispering the same song to every human.
Birds rise and migrate, unburdened by visas,
Their wings knowing only direction, not dispute.
Clouds drift from the warm Bay of Bengal,
Carrying rain to the waiting thirsty Indus Valley
Drifting west, taking the route, sung by *Bhittai
300 Years back, to wash the dust from Indus plains,
For water knows no enemies, only thirst.
If the rain can fall on both sides of the wall,
And the air fills every lung with equal grace,
If nature lives without walls or weapons,
Why can’t we learn to coexist in peace?
*Bhittai – Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, the Great Mystic Poet of Sindh, in one of his verses defines the route of clouds rising from the Bay of Bengal to shower over the Indus plains during the monsoon.
*****
Haiku
1.
Leeches of the land,
Sucking the blood of the poor,
Heartless, through and through!
2.
Rulers of our time,
Feasting on the bitter sweat,
Of the broken soul!
3.
Feudal lords and elites,
Devouring the nation’s wealth,
What a cruel fate!
4.
Judges and police,
Guarding the oppressor’s hand,
Leeches in disguise!
5.
Parliament’s high halls,
Built upon the poor man’s blood,
Where the tyrants feast!
6.
People bleed and cry,
While the rulers celebrate,
In their grand domains!
*****
Mothers of the World
Women,
More than half the world, they say,
But I see more,
I see the rest
As their sons.
For who among us was not born
From the warm silence
Of a woman’s breath?
The earth itself
Feels like a mother’s palm,
Rough with work,
Soft with mercy.
She carries us all,
In wombs,
In words,
In wounds that never close.
Every man walking in pride
Is a child she once held
Against her beating heart.
So count again,
The world is not divided,
It is doubled with her presence.
Women are not half,
They are the whole,
And we,
The echoes of their beginning.
*****
About the Poet
Nasir Aijaz, based in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province of Pakistan, is a senior award-winning and Gold Medalist journalist having served in the field of journalism for half a century in senior positions like editor and managing editor. He also worked as a TV Anchor for over a decade and conducted some 400 programs besides appearing as analyst in several current affairs programs on TV and Radio channels. He is the award-winning author of ten books on history, language, literature, travelogue, translations from English literature, and biography. One of his books, a translation of poetry of an Egyptian poet, has been published in Cairo. Some of his other books are unpublished. Besides, he has written over 500 articles in English, Urdu and Sindhi, the native language of Sindh. He is editor of Sindh Courier, an online magazine and Chief Editor of Sindhi Edition of The AsiaN, an online news service of South Korea. Dozens of his articles have been published in South Korea while many of his articles have also been translated in Arabic and Korean languages. Many of his English articles have been published in Singapore, Egypt, India and Nigeria. His poems have been translated and published in over a dozen languages including Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Malayalam, Albanian, Italian, Greek and Arabic language published in UK, USA, Algeria, Egypt, Abu Dhabi, Iraq, Bangladesh, India, Kosovo, Albania, Tajikistan, Greece, Italy, Germany, China, Korea, Italy and some other countries. Very recently, audio albums of his poems have been recorded in South Korea, China and the UK.
