Do not ask of me for that first love, my Beloved
As I understood it, having you here makes Life so luminous
Sharing your woes, I have no quarrel with sorrows of the world
Your radiant beauty blesses the earth with eternal Spring
What does this world possess to compare with your eyes?

If you were mine, Fate would bow to my command
It was not so, though I wanted it only to be so
The present time has other torments besides mere love
Other pleasures besides the thrill of coming together

Dark spells threaded on the brutal loom of Ages
Woven in silk, satin and brocade
Hand over fist, bodies sold in alleys and bazaars
Bathed in blood, shrouded in ash
Bodies forged in furnaces of pestilence
Pus oozing from their festering sores …
What can I do? My gaze keeps turning to them too
But what can I do? Though your beauty is ever attractive

The present time has other torments besides mere love
Other pleasures besides the thrill of coming together
Do not ask of me for that first love, my Beloved.

(My take on a poem by the beloved Faiz Ahmed Faiz)

(c) Satori Publishing, 2016.