Sharing poems in a burning world?
I met a person — a poet, I saw her and admired, we were walking to the same room when we talked for the first time. When we sat down she asked something and I replied.
She read a poem she wrote, in Urdu it goes, like a traditional love lore, but right now I only have the one she wrote ‘thinking of me’ as she said, it was a gift — a return to be precise, since I shared first a poem I wrote about her.
I looked at her as she teared up when I handed her my poem, on a roof in thick scorching heat with only a light shade above us, a smoke bin near us and empty seats across us, I only gave it when the guy with us had left, I didn’t know either of them for more than 2 days but I didn’t understand the guy. I remember she said ‘I can’t believe it, someone wrote a poem for me?” “ I thought poets never get poems written about them” it’s true she is a good poet.
When I titled this post ‘in a burning world’, I thought about the political chaos, the starving children, I imagined the innocent people who sleep every night to the sound of bombs, I imagined the trapped, the tortured and then I stopped, I can never imagine a pain not my own, I can never understand what they go through, the strength, the struggle not one bit. I thought I had a point but I’m losing it, I can’t comprehend, only that the guilt eats me sometimes, that our community, the one, is suffering so much that I see their homes fall to dust on news, I see baby brother’s sister’s funerals in Palestine, all this is a burning world right, still ‘until the fire doesn’t burn me I avert my eyes’ that’s horrible to say, even in secrecy. I wake up healthy and blessed, still I do wake up and I’m grateful to the love I have in my life, all of them, the poet I met, we exchanged poems, stories and reminders.
And you know Katie Ferris, she is a breast cancer survivor, she’s a poet, she wrote this Why write love poetry in a burning world
since she battled cancer ‘burning world’ may refer to her radiation treatment, or it might also allude to Russia’s artillery attacks on Ukraine In any case her poem goes :
To train myself to find, in the midst of hell
what isn't hell.
The body, bald, cancerous, but still
beautiful enough to
imagine living the body
washing the body
replacing a loose front
porch step the body chewing
what it takes to keep a body
going—
This scene has a tune
a language I can read a door
I cannot close I stand
within its wedge
a shield.
Why write love poetry in a burning world?
To train myself, in the midst of a burning world
to offer poems of love to a burning world.
