Member-only story
The Shrines We Build in Bondage
~ an invocation, a shikwa ~
Shikwa—
from Arabic “Shaykwa” — a complaint, a lamentation.
The concept of SHIKWA has been used in Urdu Poetry in which a complaint is addressed to a Beloved ( God ) or a lamentation in despair of the human condition, invoking intervention.
We
stood by
we
saw your walls fall
laughed
as we saw
afflictions
run rivulets
down iniquitied faces
thoroughfares
of our minds
splintered
we watched
our walls crash
we laughed
at the promise
of stainless windows
we laughed.
You
watch as corpses
run jagged
through
decanted sound
through
grotesque opulences
through
our filthied bodies
You
see veined gold
we
see etiolated bones.
A malevolency
too great
to bear
builds a shrine
to sheened terror …
Still,
water
blue air
fat grasses
licked fruit
and eucalyptus songs
memorize us.
We
see carrion eaters
wheel an attack
our tongues
pillaged by
metallic ichors.
We
weep rusted tears
on a noble land
weep as we stumble
we laugh
at fallen divinations
weep
as we stumble
towards You
In chains
Farida Haque
