How many have suffered like I have suffered?
For years my tragedy will be remembered
* * *
In a cage of suffering I met my plight
And with my tears, a message of grief I write
Its ink overflows with the tears of my sight
Seeing my crushed child and house set alight
Flames that ignited my sorrows with its light
If they were poured onto days, they’d become night
To an ocean of sorrows I surrendered
For years my tragedy will be remembered
* * *
Muhammad, with my tears, Ali would bury
What some saw as death, I saw a tragedy
I surrendered myself to his soul’s beauty
And embraced his death as a calamity
My tears filled a wound that his death left empty
I was a part of him, him a part of me
I used to cry his name and no-one answered
For years my tragedy will be remembered
* * *
Wandering the Lord of the world an orphan
Two weight things from Fatima they’d stolen
The inheritance of my father taken
And my husband’s right to lead Ahmed’s nation
To a world of injustice we’d awaken
It lay scattered with the graves of my children
A world of murder and hatred we’d entered
For years my tragedy will be remembered
* * *
At the house that angels visit, they gathered
No care for the house that Muhammad had fathered
Where even Satan toward us surrendered
They burned the house of the man that I mothered
The heavenly rose that Muhammad nurtured
They struck it, broke its rib and left it withered
And with a broken rib, alone, I wandered
For years my tragedy will be remembered
* * *
Hated by the world, I told the world, goodbye
O’ Fitha don’t tell my children that I’ll die
I passed away and saw Hassan in my eye
Holding Hussain, uncontrollably he’d cry
And upon my chest for hours, they would lie
O’ mother get up and to our cries reply
I watched the orphans that I had once mothered
For years my tragedy will be remembered
* * *
(London – 01/03/13)