Poems

Pride

How sweet the tales of battlefields.
How easy the cries of praise and bravo.
How pleasing to talk of fearless men
and share legends of their heroic lives.
How soothing the old songs are to the ear
and the names of the lion hearts sung by maidens.
How proudly pretty girls, like bunches of flowers,
flock eagerly to the shrines of martyrs.
 
But has anyone asked the martyr about his wounds?
Has anyone talked to the hero about his suffering?
Has anyone looked in his eyes on the threshold of death
and read their tale of thwarted hopes?
Has anyone seen the broken heart of the martyr’s mother?
Has anyone witnessed the ruined life of the young widow?
Has anyone stumbled on the rubble of a thousand dreams?
Has the poet who writes of chains and shackles
felt the chill of a dungeon at night?
Has he been thrown into a scorpion pit
to be stung to the bone again and again?
 
I can never forget what the wise man says:
‘The fires burns the land on which it ignites’.