Poems of Ali Siddiqui

The Hunger of God

God—
the sovereign of stones and bullets—
adores the heads and chests of men.

In famine-stricken lands,
the children of God crush and claw
the heads and hearts of men,
chanting His name,
raising Him to glory.
The Almighty grows pleased.

Blood-soaked alluvial soil glitters;
within the brain and liver of men
the harvest of death matures.
The hunger of earth
is sated by the men of earth.

You, I, and we—
leaving behind
the miraculous warmth of God—
become, with effortless surrender,
the food of God Himself.

The Irresistible Pull

When lightning flashes in the heart,
I am drawn toward you—
in one sudden surge
I reach an unknown chamber of silence.

Then language breaks—
I search in splintered mirrors of memory
for your beloved face,
chasing broken kites of nostalgia,
drowning in the scent
of our first kiss,
gasping through blind dives
in the dark waters of desire.

When I come near you,
the gates of endless meadows open;
evening, fragrant and dizzy,
turns childlike once more.
The slow rhythm of night
unfolds its market of songs;
in the forest of your hair
star-lamps flicker to life,
and in the trembling wind
floats an unbridled sea of souls.

When lightning flashes in the heart,
I must abandon all—
and come to you.

Though an ideological figure imbued with revolutionary consciousness, Ali Siddiqui appears in literature and the arts as a distinctly pluralistic warrior of the pen. Love, separation, and romance; life and the world—nothing remains hidden from the sky of his contemplation. Writing, for him, is a simple equation for perceiving the world through the resonance of a deeply personal consciousness. As a poet, writer, and translator, he is widely known among readers. His editing of Monmanchitra, an intricate web of mind and intellect, stands as a refined expression of his creativity and thought, as well as a catalyst for their growth. Amid his love for literature and artistic sensibility, he continually seeks the ethics and aesthetics of lived, worldly experience. He has sixteen publications spanning both prose and poetry. He lives with his family in the suburbs of the city of Philadelphia.

Translated by Ali Siddiqui.
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