Betrayal

Drowning in silence
The moment shrieks
At the gnawing violence
Of this mind’s deceit
But the eyes reveal
What the lips conceal -
A promise broken
And a melancholic defeat.

© Dan Husain

Upside Down

A few months back I was sitting in a hospital lounge and I picked up a magazine, The Week, to while my time. The magazine had an article on existence of God and detailed some chemist or physicist, Dr. Unwin's work on God's existence. Dr. Unwin used Bayes theorem and the concept of conditional probability to prove God's existence. He began with the premise that the chance God exists is 50:50. Then he threw in more information and revised his a priori probabilities. The iterative process continued till he exhausted his set of information. The end result was that the probability that God exists is 2/3.

I picked it up from there and wrote this.

Upside Down

Upside down
Like a sage’s tale
Spun in a Darwinian yarn
We receive life’s wisdom-
One day there is God,
The other nothing.

In a sprawling precinct of a mosque
From the member to the mehrab
I see strange bedfellows-
Descartes conforming Islam.
But between the matter and the myth
Between the sword and the scythe
God waivers like a quark;
Like a twist in a tale
Poignant, humorous, stark

I turn a page
There is ‘Paradise Lost’ in its verses
I turn another
God struts in probability’s realm with Bayes.
A million tongues sprout here
With a million words on their tips
But I have heard of a chemist
Who works backwards to reach forward.
He says the chance that God exists is 2/3
(Surely a smaller fraction than 9/11)
And unwittingly he is named Dr. Unwin.

©Murtaza Danish Husain
August 7, 2004
Revised February 22, 2005

I had the option to use the english words for arabic words member (pulpit) and mehrab (arch) but I retained the arabic ones purely for the phonetic effect. Similarly, I am not sure whether Dr. Unwin is a physicist or a chemist but I have retained chemist because it conveys subtle drama.

Darkness. . .

So the orange sun
Of our once heady love
Has slid past
The gray arch
Of our everyday horizon.

And now a vacuous sky
Screeches at me
Like an anguished cry
Of a beast slain
By a butcher’s machete.

I turn my back
On the graying memories
And let the dusk
Settle in cavernous chimneys
Bellowing smoke
Like funeral pyres
Of the day
That has just met its end.

Softly the darkness shrouds
Trampling twigs and leaves
That you fondly buried
In your diary of poetry
And good deeds.

But I draw blood from eyes
Seek redemption for
Sunken hollowed cheeks
As I stare at the reflection
That the mirror throws –
A body of a poet;
A soul of a whore.

© Dan Husain
June 17, 2005

Confabulations

There are days
When I see afloat
In your iridescent eyes
Many hued happiness
Teasing me,
Beckoning me
To paint
The rest of my days
With it.

I am wondering,
Still musing
When you gently knock me,
“Why?
Are you drowned in my eyes?”
I emit a coy laugh –
Wish I wasn’t
Carrying the burden
Of being wise.

And hence we go from here
To bougainvillea-laden street,
Orange morning,
Silver bleached beach,
Alfresco caf้e
In Parisian neighborhood
Where we, carefree, laugh till
Time stands still.

ฉ Dan Husain
May 10, 2005