Dear Readers,
Here is a poem by Abdul Hafeez, from his book of Urdu poetry, published in Pakistan.
For such a short poem so many questions arise and could be discussed in small groups. Thank you Abdul for this concise, elegant and thoughtful poem and for allowing it to appear on this blog.
One sees the man at the gallows giving up his life to remain integrous. Who would really do that today? It happened often in Europe during the religious wars. What historic events do your students know of when this happened?
How truthful are people today? Many of our politicians lie to us routinely, but what about you, how truthful are you?
Then the quiet admission of great pain, but kept private. This is not Hello magazine my dears where people spread their innards out over glossy pages. This personal poem has dignity.
I hope you enjoy this poem as much as I do and share it with your students to help increase their appreciation of literature, while improving their English discussion skills.
If I were Looking glass
By Abdul Hafeez
Never ever in my life,
Would I lie for expediency
Even before the king, even at the gallows,
Only and only truth I’d speak,
If I were Looking glass,
But for being human,
I’m born to be shattered ceaselessly, dear.
Sometimes by shock,
Sometimes by fatal pangs of separation,
If I were Looking glass,
Surely I'd be crashed into tiny pieces by
ruthless stone.
But only once it happened – just once in my
life.
If I were Looking glass.
Abdul commented to me about his poem:
ReplyDelete"Perhaps the first part reflects the mechanism of universalities i.e. the course of life always follows its track at its own pace. While the second part seems to reflect that every status-quo has ultimately to taste the flavor of change."
Re your poem I did see the "flavour of change" in the second part, but
I did not see the message that nothing changes in the first part, more
I saw a statement of your personal integrity. This is why poetry is
such a good thing for classroom discussion because matters are open to
interpretation and not written out like a cartoon for kids. Of course
you wrote the poem, so you know what you are really saying, we readers
have to do our best to understand you.
You have an interesting blog. I love to learn english through Acronyms. recently I coined S MA CAPS (Pronounced See My Caps), an acronym/a Mnemonic to recall types of count nouns. So, Teach your kids the basics of count nouns through this simple acronym. It stands for Society, Measurement, Animals, Containers, Abstract, Person, Shape. It might help you too.
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