"Shikwah" by Khaled Mattawa

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( August 20, 2019 [Shikwah]( [Khaled Mattawa]( After Iqbal Brother on the threshing floor, body like wheat, and the red dirt that binds us, that nothing will release us from. The fig tree, the date palm, the treacherous murder unleashed into us now, the call blazing from vanity’s lungs, jutting us to a future of mindless rain, wayward blizzards of sand and snow. We were born to ward off this desolation that grinds mountains into floss, bores into our books for a whim that ordains blood, our blood and others, our sisters, mothers. Without such fear who will we be? What will we do without this aching chord, without the bright morning that tore the silver’s towers? Fire and the parched red dirt that binds, the water stolen from our wells, a black magic dredging the lower rungs of earth. We dream of clover. The soft scent of young lambs is the first letter of our alphabet, and the prophets who tighten ropes around their waists to stifle hunger's pangs, supplicant brows seeking light from earth’s core. What will we do without the angel’s voice, a tide sending us heavenward, a harmattan ushering us into the hell of its lows. How can we live without such turbulent hope? How can we accept the certainty of our quiet graves? How can we stop waiting to witness the Lord’s face? And what will we do without the hardened gaze? The girls walk past, hair fluttering like commas between poems of musk, a dream of touch like water gently falling on smooth, warm stone. What will we do without the anemones’ mournful dirge stroking the dagger’s spine and the gelding’s nightmares. Our hatred for our scoured hands, our love of the moment when the sun drops only for our eyes? Who else will hear birdsong as prayer, who will cleanse himself with the stroke of sand? Who keeps the earth rotating with praise of your name? And what will this spinning, hurtling mean without our voices shouldering it toward some ripe, sweetened pause? What will you do, dear God, without us? How will you fare, alone again in the empty vast, in the dark of your creation, without us giving you your name? [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2019 Khaled Mattawa. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 20, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. [Mattawa reads "Shikwah."]( About This Poem “The title word is the Urdu for complaint (from the Arabic shakwa), and the title of a poem by the great Indian poet [Muhammad Iqbal]( (1877-1938). A complaint to God, Iqbal’s poem bemoans the state of his people and the decline of their civilization. I first encountered Iqbal’s ‘Shikwa’ as an Arabic song by Oum Kalthoum, the great Egyptian singer, in a performance that still gives me chills today. Reading Iqbal’s poem in English translation years later, I was drawn to its rhetorical mode, its drama and range of allusions and knew that eventually, I would write a poem inspired by it. The challenge was to create personal images and symbols while also speaking in a collective voice.” —Khaled Mattawa [Khaled Mattawa]( Khaled Mattawa is the author of five volumes of poetry, most recently Mare Nostrum (Sarabande Books, 2019). A MacArthur fellow and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, he teaches at the University of Michigan and edits Michigan Quarterly Review. He lives in Ann Arbor. Photo Credit; Khairy Shaban [more-at-poets]( [Mare Nostrum]( Poetry by Mattawa [Mare Nostrum]( (Sarabande Books, 2019) "The Gods of the Age" by Adeeba Talukder [read-more]( "ojha : rituals" by Raena Shirali [read-more]( "Like Any Messiah Taken Unaware by Death" by Aisha al-Saifi [read-more]( August Guest Editor: Ruth Ellen Kocher Thanks to [Ruth Ellen Kocher](, author of Third Voice (Tupelo Press, 2016), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a [Q&A with Kocher]( about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our [guest editors for the year.]( [make a one-time donation]( [illustration]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038