Classic Poem

The people of my country wound like falcons
Their songs are like the chill of winter in the rain's locks
Their laughter hisses like flame through firewood
Their footsteps dent the firm earth
They kill, steal, drink, belch,
But they have their human worth and are good
When they have a handful of money
They hold fast to their belief in fate.
As one entered my village there sat my Uncle Mustafa
Who loved the Prophet
Who spent the hour
Between dusk and nightfall surrounded
By musing men
To whom he told a tale
Rooted in experience
A tale that stirred
Within their souls
The pain of man's mortality.
And it made them weep and bow their heads
Staring into silence
Into the gulf of deep terror and silence.
“What is the purpose of man's striving, what is the purpose of life?
Oh God!
The Sun declares Thy glory, the crescent moon is Thy brow
And these unshakable mountains are Thy steadfast throne
Thou art He whose will is accomplished, Oh God!
A certain man rose to eminence, erected castles
with forty rooms filled with glittering gold
And on one faint twilight evening
Azrael came to him
his fingers grasping a small book
And Azrael stretched out his staff
with the secret of life and death
and that man's soul was pitched into Hell!
(Oh God! …
How cruel and full of menace thou art,
Oh God!)”

Yesterday I visited my village
Uncle Mustafa had died
They laid him to rest in the earth
He built no castles (his hut was of mud)
And behind his ancient coffin
Walked those who, like him, owned only an old cotton gown
They said no word of God or Azrael
For it was a year of famine
And at the door of the tomb stood my friend Khaleel
Uncle Mustafa's grandson
And when he stretched up his brawny arms toward the sky
A look of contempt flickered across his eyes
For it was a year of famine.