We are the sad people
I believe we have become the saddest people in the world. not only the saddest but the most tragic.
We are the sad people
We are the tragic people
We carry our losses and stare
Our losses carry us and stare back
We are the sad people
The very sad people
With holes in our hearts
And holes in our memories
We walk into the valley of death
Into the hollow land
Hollowed out of our deathless ruin
We are the forgotten sad
Sad but without hearts
For our hearts
Have been given trophies
To a world without hearts
To help it shed a tear or two
Before, bright eyed,
It treads harshly on our severed hearts.
Between the heart and its pity
Between compassion and its mercy
Between the love and its tenderness
Between consciousness and its feelings
Falls the axe then it falls again
Between the cry and its destination
Between the tear and its grace
Between the tragedy and its catharsis
Between the cross and its redemption
Falls the axe then it falls again
Between pain and its healing
Between life and its salvation
Between despair and hope
Between the dark and the invocation of light
Between the prayer and its God
Strikes the axe and shrikes again
We are the sad the saddest people
We are the tragic people
The people of Aeschylus and Sophocles
The people forced into the valley of death
The people pushed into the valley of tears
The people awaiting the axe
To fall then fall again.
Alisar Iram
We are the tragic people
My comment on my poem on Facebook
When I wrote my poem, “We are the Saddest People “ last night “some of my friends, justifiably, were shocked at its “despairing” tone. They wondered how they could go on fighting against the regime with souls fraught with despair. I became confused because my poem according to me was about a terrible genocidal crime committed against the Syrian people. I was doing in words what Picasso did in the Guernica. It was an anguished cry against what was committed, or allowed to be committed, against the Syrians by a staring ambivalent world. For me it was not about despair. It was about assigning the role of the tragic victims to the Syrian people. But in order to console my friends I answered the comments from their point of view. Below are some of my answers:
“It is addressed to the world. the murderous callous ruthless world. I am sorry but they should know what is happening to the Syrians. A poet speaks with the conscience of humanity. You and I can have hope Youla because we are not walking in the valley of death.”
” I am expressing what the people without hope are feeling because they have no voices.We become their voices without losing our own.”
” In the midst of death there is life. In the midst of despair there is hope.In the midst of it all there are children who are still laughing.”
“WE reach the end of despair in order to kill despair.”
“Therese, my poem might be expressing despair, but at the end of the road the human spirit is at its mightiest.People who have become desperate have nothing to lose so they give their all. Victories are born of such feelings.”
©Alisar Iram
The Guernica
alisariram 