A Letter to Prophet Muhammad ( pbuh) – Rizwan Akhtar

(Yeats says tread softly because you tread on my dreams)
I have laid bare my heart sealed by your memory, birds
trees together sing a genre of melancholic desert song
plead for your intervention summers are too hot to spend
but have heard the wind deflected by your Green Dome
brings a flood of fragrance, a numerologist told me that
all of Your names constellate emotions quite unguarded.
You know the world is too difficult a place to live (you
who have mounted camels and conversed with Beduins
pruning their rugged tones) shrines are squandered
by half-baked chaplet-churning custodians no reprieve
from pandemics the Burmese monks chopped heads of
Rohingya now the Russians have invaded Ukraine
the Prime Minister of Pakistan is sent home the one
who told the world that when you blaspheme our Beloved
pain runs through body seeps into nerves but there are
others cold bodies our courts of law uniformed testing
missiles against an unknown enemy collect their booty
from imperial shopping malls and markets of a world
divided between Macrons and Trumps hedging Arabs
dancing behind them holding swords with blunt edges—
the stripped Prime Minister wields over crowds for he
can sense, against all calumny, Your love spilling over—
a dervish munches stale bread smilingly, evening’s
Call for Prayer opens libations of Ramzan, a restless
sparrow calms dipping tiny beak in a clayed pot of water—
I implore! visit our forsaken hordes make us reiterate vows
that we shall house migrants, read our neighbours poems of
polite pangs— the Almighty and his angels repeat your name!
Rizwah Akhtar, April, 2022
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