This poem reminds me of Jaafri, the Urdu.

Ali Sardar Jaafri – Urdu poet

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[ This poem was written by Ali Sardar Jaafri, a famous Indian Urdu poet.
Jaafri has won several awards including Padma Shri, Iqbal Samman,
Soviet Land Nehru Award, and most recently India's Jnanpith Award. A
recent Hindustan Times article discusses the remarkable juxtaposition of
this poem with Shovana Narayanan's Kathak dance composition. The
following is an English translation by Philop Nikolayev.]

That day will come without fail:
the lamps of the eyes will go out,
the lotuses of the palms will wilt.

From the leaf of the tongue
the butterflies of speech
will flutter away forever.

Still laughing like myriad blossoms,
all faces will fall and scatter
in the depths of the darkest sea.

The strife of blood, the throb of heart
and every melody will go mute.

On the blue velvet of space
that luminous crystal of diamond,
and these my heaven and earth,
the nights and the mornings all
will shed tears of dew
on the human handful of dust.

Every cherished thing will go, plucked
from memory's fine pagan shrine.
And then no friend will ask a friend:
"Why don't we see Sardar today?"

Yet I will return here yet
to speak out of the mouths of babes,
to warble with the tongues of birds.

When in the earth seeds burst out laughing
and green-fingered sprouts tease the soil
I, leaf by leaf and bud by bud,
will open all my eyes,
balancing on green palms drops of dew.

I will take on the hue of henna,
the harmony of a ghazal.
And like a young bride's virgin cheek,
I'll glow through every bridal veil.

When chilly winds bring on their tails
the season of desolation,
under the traveler's young feet
my laughter will resound in the dry leaves.

All the gold rivers of the earth,
all the blue lakes of heaven
will brim with my existence.

The world will see under my star
every tale become my story,
where every lover is Sardar
and every love is my Sultana.

I'm but a fleeting moment's flop
in time's uncanny magic-room,
I'm but a vacillating drop
on its brief trip through light and gloom,
as from the goblet of the past
into the future's cup I flow.

I sleep and wake up as I go,
I wake and fall asleep as fast,
a centuries-old game: the breath
of immortality in death.

http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/01122001/45.htm

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1717/17171020.htm 

BORN in an aristocratic Muslim family of Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh in 1913, Ali Sardar Jafri plunged into politics early and joined the national movement. He went to jail several times on account of his political activities. He left for Bombay in 1942 and spent most of his life in this metropolis. A friend of revolutionary Turkish poet Nazim Hikmat and Nobel Prize winner Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Jafri remained the leader of progressive Urdu writers till the end. He began his literary career with a coll ection of short stories Manzil (Destination) in 1938 and made a mark as a poet with Parvaz (Strength to Fly) in 1943. His Nai Duniya ko Salam (Salute to the New World) and Asia Jaag Utha (Asia has awakened) were translated int o many Indian as well as foreign languages.

While Marxism permeated his whole being and writing, it never became an ideological cage for him. Jafri encompassed the great humanistic traditions and compassion of the Sufi and Bhakti movements, the love of nature found in the works of Kalidas, and an assimilative vision of India's composite culture. In no other Urdu poet – perhaps with the sole exception of Nazir Akbarabadi who lived in the 18th century – would one find quite the same kind of effusive celebration of Krishna with his Gokul, Gautam Bud dha with his disciple Anand and Chandalika, glory of the Vedas, the Radha of Vidyapati's poetry, and so on. True to his commitment, he penned beautiful poems on Karl Marx and Paul Robeson too.

Such was the force of his personality and the power of his pen that even Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a life-long member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had to concede in his speech while giving away the Jnanpith award that one could di ffer with Jafri's views but not with his vision. When Vajpayee made his bus trip to Lahore last year, Jafri went along as a special invitee, chosen since he best symbolised the essential unity of mankind. Among the Indian Prime Minister's main gifts to h is Pakistan counterpart was a collection of Jafri's poems entitled Sarhad (Border).

Ali Sardar Jafri was steeped in the best traditions of secularism. He fought against imperialism all through his life while remaining aware that imperialism had a great capacity to take on newer forms. His Marxist convictions gave him a strong sense of s ocial justice and equality between classes, castes, religions, languages, and sexes. With his demise at the age of 86, Urdu literature has lost a man who broadened its horizons and deepened its perceptions. Truly he was the Sardar of Urdu literature.

66th Sonnet, William Shakespeare

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

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see trees of green red roses too
i see them bloom for me and you
and i think to myself what a wonderful world

i see skies of blue and clouds of white
the bright blessed day the dark sacred night
and i think to myself what a wonderful world

the colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
are also on the faces of people goin’ by
i see friends shaking hands saying “how do you do”
they’re really saying “i love you”

i hear babies cry i watch them grow
they’ll learn much more than i’ll ever know
and i think to myself what a wonderful world
yes i think to myself what a wonderful world

I love that when poetry is posted, people immediately respond in poetry!

Life! There is sooo much potential!

Here’s one:

“Daughter”

Why is the world at peace.
This may astonish you a little but when you realise how
easily Mrs. Charles Bianco sells the work of American
painters to American millionaires you will recognize that
authorities are constrained to be relieved. Let me tell you a
story. A painter loved a woman. A musician did not sing.
A South African loved books. An American was a woman
and needed help. Are Americans the same as incubators.
But this is the rest of the story. He became an authority.

—- Gertrude Stein

Everywhere you turn, there is the face of God.

Sum o’ me fav-rites:

We’ll invade at the drop of a hat
install thugs where a government sat
and when they attack
we’ll be taken aback
like damned fool who ate where he shat

He don’t care if the polls say no
so says the face he does show
but this song and dance
this damn-the-polls stance
he takes because the polls say so

A coke feind and a confirmed lush
Has only a button to push
so we’ll glow in the dark;
someone get a narc:
DEA save us from this Bush!

There now lives a millionaire
who sponsers terror in the air
my question is why
such an afluent guy
‘d stop feasting long enough to care

Wether it is the national debt
or some terrible terrorist threat
you can see from the smug
and bored look on his mug
that such things do not cause Bush to fret

Whatever’s the mess that he’s in
be it even one caused by his kin
it’s fair to assume,
to belive and presume
that the President blames Bin Ladin

There once was a Moslem fanatic
who kept dynamite in his attic
with a wink and a nod
he said that Jihad
was a matter completely dogmatic

There was a man from Pyongyang
who had an aluminum wang
he had two tin nuts
that came with his putz
and when his dong hit a climax they rang

You came into my room
last night.
You came into my room,
and gave me a huge fright.
You remained there
with no end in sight;
you told me to mend my ways,
whether it was wrong or right.

America! You think you are-
of such high and might.
Don’t you have your own problems
to set aright?

First Draft of Blake’s “Tiger, Tiger”

Kitty, kitty, burning bright
In the shadows of the night,
What phylogeneis thereby
could wrestle thy rotundity?

In what distant deeps or skies 5
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what belly did it slither?
What missing link brought thee hither?

And what fair fish and what foul
Could twist the sinews of thy bowel? 10
And when thy gurgle gut twas mark’d,
What dread noise and what dread fart?

What the litter? What the drain?
In what box didst leave thy stain?
What the fiber? What dread grass? 15
Slips so sweetly from thine ass?

When thy gut has passed its all
And found relief from nature’s call
Didst thee smile thine work to see?
How do cute cuddles from thee? 20

Kitty, kitty, burning bright
In the shadows of the night,
What phylogeneis thereby
could wrestle thy rotundity?

Ibn al-`Arabi’s famous lines from the Interpreter of Desires:

Marvel! A garden amidst the flames!

My heart has become capable of every form,
it is a pasture for gazelles,
and a convent for Christian monks,
and a temple for idols,
and the pilgrim’s Ka’ba,
and the tables of the Torah,
and the book of the Quran.
I follow the religion of Love,
whatever way Love’s camels take,
that is my religion and my faith.

Wa ashu3ara yat-ba3uhum al-qawoon.

i did not say that!

One questions why they pillage’n‘plunder 1
What spell could they’ve been under? 2
The words they take 3
And conjoin from Blake 4
Wound up to be a stunning blunder 5

Lady Anita Sa’more

Center, Don’t make me go look in the Qur’an for this. If I have your transliteration correct you are suggesting that these verses by Mohja and the shared verses about seeing God in all things is a kind of trade in rulings? Giving up one for the other?

There is no trade in one for the other. The standard in the world is rulings over love, when they should be balanced. Not knowing love of God also means one does not have good judgment in applying the rulings. When one should err on the side of mercy, one typically errs on the side of majesty.

Two examples: Being told I could not pray for my father (who had died years before) because he was not a Muslim. Listening to the khutba, again and again and again, that one should not be close friends with the Jews and the Christians.

You know what? You can argue for those positions. But you do not have to. We have broad choices in traditionally accepted interpretations of the sources. Why pick the most hurtful ones, always?

There are times when one has to be firm, but again we Muslims tend to err on that side when it is unnecessary and even harmful.

That is all these poems say, with the exceptions of the raunchy ones that is….

not saying that.

may your dad rest in peace. allah yarhamoh wa yaj3aloho min ahl an-na3eem.

no. what you explained does not come close to what i think the statement above. look at it this way:

shu3ara means poets….yat-ba3hum means are followed by or listened to by, admired by..get to be deciples of..etc…qawoon means those who are lead astray,those who deviate from what is right!!

Oh God I thought you wrote qanoon, sorry. I really can’t read your translit! I missed all that! I do understand your prayer for my dad and I deeply appreciate it. Thank you!

So those who follow poets are led astray?

Egads!

I think Ali Eteraz had a big spread on this topic a while back. I’ll have to go find it and link it.

But to summarize what I understand about this point, no. The poets as poets do not lead people astray. Those who choose to follow poets inasmuch as the poetry does not reflect the message of God will be led astray in the manner you mean, especially if they choose to follow those poets over and above God’s messenger.

Mohja Kahf and the great poets of our tradition—including Blake (his actual work of course—are not leading anyone astray by the hand of their own work. The reader would be at fault in these cases.

Look at it this way, how many people do you know who have read the Qur’an and find ugliness and misguidance in it? I know quite a few. Is God at fault or are they very bad readers? I blame the readers.

One should exercise one’s judgment rather than be afraid of God’s beauty reflected in poetry. By exercise I mean work it out, make mistakes, learn from them, work from that and carry on.

“My Lord increase me in knowledge!”