Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 6, No 1: CLRI Feb 2019

Ronny Noor

The Divine Messenger: Homage to Mohammed Rafi

You lift me to the heavens with your songs,

Wafting a whiff of Heaven with your songs.

I float free as dust in Creator’s glow.

What can comfort broken hearts but your songs?

You descended breaking out of the clouds:

A farishta to sing to us love songs.

You have kindled love in huts and mansions,

And we have fallen in love with your songs.

Through the curtain of dense smoke we hear you:

The flute and the azaan sing the same songs.

Birth death wedding and divorce – on every

Occasion of our lives we play your songs.

For ages you haven’t walked the streets with us.

But our hearts throb with the pulse of your songs.

When your divine voice rings in the dark hours,

The nightingales hush to welcome your songs.

Your mesmeric melody makes me wish

I could live forever wrapped in your songs.

Alas! Time will sweep me into God’s arms.

And I will fly with the drift of your songs.
 

Ghazal

The moment I popped out, claimed my mother,

She almost crossed over, my poor mother.

She held me all the more tight to her breast,

Her first born, so special to my mother.

A pure heart is a firefly in the night.

I learned the first sentence from my mother.

Gracing the dinner plate, roasted lamb chops.

Especially for you, said my mother.

When I asked her what hid under the snow,

Life, was the crisp answer of my mother.

Plato pursued her, as did Sartre – their

Philosophia, my dearest mother.

Seasons have rolled by since her last goodbye.

But sundown reminds me of my mother.

When I was home she’d holler: The switch, dear.

And the house would light up, like my mother.
 

Ronny is an English professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, U.S.A. An award-winning teacher, his poems, essays, and stories have appeared in journals and newspapers such as The Toronto Review, South Asian Review, Taj Mahal Review, Commonwealth Novel in English, Kokako, paper wasp, FreeXpreSion, World Haiku Review, The Weekend Independent, The Daily Star, and Contemporary Literary Review India.

He is also the author of Snake Dance in Berlin (a novel), Slice of Heaven and Other Essays (a collection), and Where Heaven Spreads Wide & Other Stories (Leaf Press India).

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