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Nursat Fatah Ali Praises Muhammad pbuh – Rizwan Akhtar

New poem by Rizwan Akhtar – May, 2021

Nursat Fatah Ali Praises Muhammad pbuh

Oh! Muhamamd wearing the black robe no one like you

a sacred angst makes listeners agape in-between notes

silence becomes a saintly chamber the maestro conducts

a wedding of tabla and Vedder’s guitar in a French priory

and parks this Pavarotti of East frees himself from the

norms of rhythm his vocal chords transgress human range

making people dance as if Rumi meets the party in dream

strollers and those homeless in quest of an oasis pause

the verses drenched in Persian wine make dervishes

and women at Venetian windows stagger his voice climbs

over creepers and the dust-filled alleys of Lahore’s shrines

with those Dionysian vertigos of lovers losing all over

how beautiful God made Muhammad stood by have-nots

puffy cheeks hairs sweating he goes on like a god lumbers

the Olympian heights; had there been no Muhammad

this World had never come into being supplication pours

as God’s angles in heaven iterate Muhammad’s name

on earth Nusrat topples boundaries a Goethe of all lands.

(*Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan  a Pakistani vocalist, musician, composer and music director primarily a singer of qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music.  Khan’s experimental work featured his collaborations with the Canadian guitarist Michael Brook, Pearl Jam’s lead singer Eddie Vedder on two songs for the soundtrack to Dead Man Walking.)

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