And before I had the time to grasp the intensity of what happened....
Poems forever
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a celebrated German poet, playwright, historian, physician, and philosopher. Here’s his short poem entitled Archimedes und der Schüler.
To Archimedes came a youth desirous of knowledge.
“Tutor me,” spoke he to him, “in the most godly of arts,
Which such glorious fruit to the land of our father hath yielded
And the walls of the town from the Sambuca preserved!”
“Godly nams’t thou the art? She is’t,” responded the wise one;
“But she was that, my dear son, e’re she the state served.
Woulds’t thou but the fruits from her, these too can the mortal engender;
Who doth woo the Goddess, seek not the woman in her.”
By Bariyah Faisal
Hurt turned into anger
Anger turned into numbness
And before I had the time to grasp the intensity of what happened
I started losing myself
I stopped living
By Habiba Majid
Colored paths with grim lines
How do I to think alike
And heavy contrasts that strike
Two universes that never collide
Notions rendering me safe haven
Me, myself, my words engraven
By Amna Ameer
An old written tale
That no longer rhymes
Because it wasn’t a poem
Though it settled in the heart
It ripped it into pieces
The same way
Reckless words do
Written in naivety
May be innocence
Is just premeditated pervasiveness
Waiting to walk out
Into the full lit moon
On paths that can no longer
Carry shadows of versions
Of ourselves
That have been cast away
By the waves of time
Complex emotions
Run intricately
Like fresh henna
On hands of an oblivious soul
That doesn’t know
What it’s like
To be lost
Not in the same way as before
Because now this heart
Knows where it belongs
It is just unwanted
Weighing in on the decision
Of what burdens more
The cost of living
On borrowed breaths
And acrylic happiness
With colours fading in
Each passing year
Or the price of carrying death
Inside you in hopes
A funeral procession
Will engage the world’s whimsy
And they will know
How beautiful it is
To walk in the dark
And the only way
To see ahead
Is to create a path of scars
By burning one’s own skin
Till the suffering is no longer
Recognizable
And once gone
The world will look back
And ask
What if?
And this heart will let out
Till when?
Compiled by SK
