A Poet Braves Afghanistan's Bloody Politics
Two months ago, the Afghan poet Latif Pedram published the poem "Kabul" in the French newsletter Nomade. It is a poem of witness, sorrowful but necessary, that speaks to the city's violence and struggle--something Pedram learned about firsthand when, almost a decade ago, the Taliban forced him to flee Afghanistan. He has since returned to find that the "new city" of Kabul is no better than the old.
Kabul
Of something that is like the wind,
Of something that is like the sea,
Of something that is like the moon,
Of something that is like bread,
of the thirst of a poem sad and alive
I must write.
The crash of thousands explosions
- throughout the day,
through the night -
Of the outstretched hand of thousands of beggars
in the wounded streets
of this new city -
I must write.
Of the impatient laments of the rain
Of the death of nature,
Of the death of joy,
Of drinking throughout the night
Of the dark cuts of sadness,
The machine guns, the bombs and the blood,
I must write.
So many wind,
burnt faces by the sun,
So many men dishonoured, desperate
Who come home with bundles of hunger,
With a burden of scars,
Of something which is like tears,
Of something which is like blood,
Of something which is like Kabul
I must write.
Not content solely to bear witness, Pedram has twice tried to enact political change, running for president as leader of the multi-ethnic Afghanistan National Congress Party he helped create. During his first campaign in 2004, he caused a stir by speaking out against hard-line religion, in favor of women's rights, and by bluntly criticizing Hamid Karzai for ruling as a puppet of the United States.
Pedram's views--too radical for Afghanistan--earned him just over 1% of the vote, but they certainly got him noticed. In February of last year, the Afghan government placed him under house arrest to prevent him from stirring up too much trouble this election cycle. Undeterred, Pedram ran for president again. ''Whether I win is not very important,'' he has said, ''I want to create a new way of thinking.''
Pedram's desire for a "new way of thinking" was stoked by the suffocating rule of the Taliban. He was the director of the 55,000 volume Library of the Foundation Nasser Khosrow when the Taliban burned it down in 1998, destroying many thousand-year-old treasures of Persian Literature. He described the scene in his essay "The Library is on Fire," which he published in the French publication Autodafe.
Through the little window of the hideout where I took refuge, I watched the Taliban burn books on the city's main public square...It was as if Genghis Khan, disguised as Mollah Omar (the Taliban leader) had entered the city with his army to repeat the most tragic event of our history. At that moment I too did not have the strength to speak...Through this repetition of a tragedy so often repeated in the history of our civilization, Afghanistan shamefully entered the twenty-first century.
Later in the essay, Pedram stresses the importance of poetry as a means of artistic and cultural expression in Afghanistan--it was allowed to exist when other art forms had been snuffed out. As Pedram explained,
Only poetry, of all the artistic and cultural forms, has a certain freedom of expression in Afghanistan...poetry offers great possibilities for expression; rhetorical figures, and the use of symbols and metaphors do not make the censors' task easy.
Pedram himself has become a symbol. And so long as his government fights what he sees as necessary progressive change, he has no plans to make its task easy either.
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POETS AND POEMS
Poetry blossomed long before Shakespeare, Milton or Poe.
It thrived prior to Solomon and the languages of old.
Poetry today offers itself more often in the form of music
Then in sonnets and poems as the legends of life unfold.
Man has his fear of loneliness, death and the hereafter
As authors compose his doom, desperation and glory.
All hear the words of both good and evil
With too many that fall for the wrong story.
The falsehoods of life find it hard to hide
From the word of God’s poets and poems.
Sharing their joy, frustration and sorrow
By voice, Internet, radio, or books, in our homes.
Poets and poems help man become more human
As the storms of life proliferate their toll.
Poets and poems were put here for a reason
To help tame the savage that dwells in our soul.
By Tom Zart
He's right "criticizing Hamid Karzai for ruling as a puppet of the United States." The US has no business being in Afghanistan, and Afghans haven't gained anything by the military invasion and occupation in the 8 years of it.
The once relevant justification of "hot pursuit" has long given way to it being just another illegal act of military aggression which will leave the Afghan people no better off than they were under the brutality of the Taliban. US brutality and atrocities there have far greater than that of the Taliban.
People across the globe are better of without the brand of "democracy" that the US exports at gunpoint. It's one thing going in there to help the people of Afghanistan establish a working democracy along lines they decide and totally another being there under the pretense of doing so, when the entire globe is aware the only "interests" the US is looking out for is its own, in controlling and limiting energy distribution to the entire region including Pakistan, India, South East Asia and China.
And don't come with that hogwash about it being better to fight the enemy outside the US than on "homeland" soil. That enemy is a creation of exactly this perverted foreign policy. And don't come with rationalization around looking out for the human rights of the Afghan people, when a blind eye is turned to the stooge governments policy of forcing women to comply with their husbands sexual demands under threat of starvation.
Case in point:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/23/three-former-top-cia-agen_n_266721.html
Of the dark cuts of sadness
----
A haunting, never settled, dusty pall hangs over that mountain crested city.
Roses are red, violets are blue
Who woulda thought
Huffington Post
has poetry
too
He writes poems in the early dawns
US soldiers dodge bullets and bombs
We fight for his right to write his rights
He sleeps soundly while Americans fight
What's wrong with this picture?
perhaps we forgot what were fighting for ?
Really, that poem gave you the impression he sleeps soundly?
Right? He is not sleeping soundly. They are also dodgin the bullets and the bombs. And it was America that created this.
POETS ARE THE BELL RINGERS of THE SOUL
Poets as a rule are high on adventure
Like wondering bards or prophets today.
Embracing hearts and minds with wisdom
Casting through verse their visions at play.
Poets have their dreams and their nightmares
Of love, life, death, faith and war.
They feel the pain and tragedy of others
Even those they’ve never met before.
They fan the flames of human compassion
With their stories of the failings of man.
Professing to follow a higher power
As they recruit whomever they can.
Poets are the bell ringers of the soul
As they depict the past, the present and beyond.
They sound their alarm of what lies ahead
As the missteps of man live on.
By Conservative Poet
Tom Zart
Most Published Poet
On The Web
Only one poem on this page so far.
I agree.
but honestly as i recall
i never wanted to be a poet at all
i really think it was my parents
you see..they didn't scar me early with shame
how would i ever know that this would be such a world of conformity
and that i would be that wild-hair no one could ever tamed
i never sat up one night and tried to rhyme dome with rome
no....i'd just be babbling away
and suddenly my heart would say
Hey !!
This is a poem
Stanley Winder
Liberal Poet
and seldom published
but often copied
Haven't read the article yet, but I would like say - that is one HOT POET.
:) Gotta agree!
"Here's to the moment when things begin
Here's to the heart still brave with pen"
awesome
Cold yellow day, Kabul's old Soviet airport
crowded with soldiers, sternly watching
outside the gates, then, a friendly face, and;
huge armored Stryker swinging its 50 cal
pauses, aimed right at us, then sweeps on.
Dusty lines of ragged people in the road
impossible scrum of battered cars, we
found the old compound, and walked its
faded inner flower garden until evening,
talking quietly, distant staccato gunfire.
Sun fallen behind pillar Hindu Kush, dirt
streets dark without electricity, lost in a pall
of dust arced, lanced by our headlights, we
stumble into shadowy neighborhood cafe,
laughing, cell phone our 'Iranian flashlight'.
Shishkebab and flat bread, scent of rare
spices and hint of tangerine, three old men
playing ancient music for us did not smile,
the young servant boy for us did not smile;
Skeletal cats outside crouch, then skitter off.
Leaving on the last, its sky cerulean blue,
foothills so green they tug at my mind still,
a young man in pure white muslin, upright
by the curb, armed upraised to the heavens,
his legs gone below the hips, ... praying.
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aw/dti0608/index.php?startid=20
Beautific poem.
Thank you for reminding all of us, and especially those of us who write poetry, that poetry has a strength beyond measure to tell a story when story must be told.
WORLD SPLIT APART
The façade of a building falls away and
reveals a man praying
A medieval mosque’s minaret struck into rubble
and the muezzin’s call going out bodiless
a hundred times louder
The road rutted with machinegun fire
and ghost cows dancing with their dazzled cowherds
Windows of government buildings falling into streets
revealing some making secret deals and others
receiving holy light for works of self-sacrifice
anonymously accomplished
A police department getting flattened and no
police whistles piping through the roar of falling plaster
Hillsides turning as black as ash
revealing lairs of tiny mammals
tremblingly shielding their young
This earth sliced apart like a unripe melon
revealing both incandescent fury
and radiant secrets of redemption
incomprehensibly intertwined
No one returning with a happy face at the
end of the day or followed by children like the
Pied Piper to safety beyond the rocks
The soul of man split asunder at the
first crack of unjust death and unjust retaliation
revealing a person naked drenched in
original water coming toward us surrounded by
anticipatory angels anxious for an
outcome already known to Him
who benignly created us
and Whose Voice rises inaudibly
above all other voices
saying over and over
the single word:
Peace
(from In the Realm of Neither, by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, published by The Ecstatic Exchange, written during the invasion of Southern Lebanon by Israel in 2006, and sadly relevant today and probably tomorrow...)
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