Poetry in the Storm
Jun 21st, 2008
POETRY IN THE STORM
You must let me have my poetry even in the storm
I cannot see the cyclone or twelve foot waves
But I can feel your heartbeat ebbing away.
I cannot picture myself in the storm
But I can feel the dark side
I can feel your soft feet in the white sheets being swept away
I can feel your tight grip violently ripped by the greedy ocean
I can imagine your helpless eyes in the flashes of thunder.
The storm is over but the darkest part of my life have just begun.
I have no tears
I have no one left to cry for.
I cannot leave
I have no place to go.
The storm is over but my darkest night has only begun.
You can never go away from me
You are forever etched in my mind
I will always wonder
What happens to the fire in your eyes?
I will always remember
Your gentle skin, your soft breath
And our babies between our embrace.
No heaven can save them from the cruelty we face.
Our heaven is now my living hell ‘Without You’
I wonder, how were we living so far apart in the same country?
You and I
May Ng
21st June 2008
July 1st, 2008 at 7:54 pm
[Please post my poem in your website as a tribute to the Burmese people from one across the Bay of Bengal]
A Cyclone Named After a Flower
Farida Majid
“The nightingale is hushed in the nargis grove
Listening to the grief of wild roses shedding petals.”
— A Bengali song by Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976)
In the hush of the aftermath of Nargis, the cyclone,
A nightingale, perched upon a household’s wreck,
Listens to the bruised humans groan
In grief over missing loved ones
Blown away like wild rose petals.
The backyard briar by the riverbank, half submerged now,
Holds aloft a few wind-lashed twigs.
Caught in its thorns is a maroon-colored robe
Wrapped around a putrid body
That once was the temple of a mind.
O cyclone, the wanton destroyer of such temples,
That callow meteorologist or whoever named you Nargis
Could not have known how the mind lives on,
The Buddha lives on, dharma lives on, sangha lives on,
And flowers grow again in nargis groves.
A half moon, waning and wan, stares down
Upon the Irrawady river valley.
The cyclone did not touch the garish palace in the North
Where General Than Shwe sits and rubs his fat old belly.
But wherever Nargis touched, a nargis will grow,
Bright and resplendent, and waiting to be placed upon
Daw Aung San Suu Kiy’s sweet chignon.
©2008, Farida Majid