By Omar Sabbagh
On Reading Tariq Ali’s Memoirs
History can be as small as the tiny crevice
of what might have been,
the entry that comes last on a list –
or might it be a monument
of hammered gold?
I watch you searching the nooks
where liberation happened,
you, as you kissed the world
with the scissors of your books
eating-into the paper the victors rule,
line by desperate line….
And so, the opposite of a politician
and of the soap-like dereliction
of oak, honesty, you scan the scene
of time for the poetry beneath the prose,
for the darling riches of the in-between.
No. It’s true: you can’t please all
when your shoulders have proved a burden
beneath another burden. Stand tall, then,
try again. Try once more to return
politics to its home, a dough-thick thing
between the hands of men and women.
Listen to the pedigree of the songs
of those in need, of those, rich
with words that bleed – you know, the red lyrics.
