Bol - Speak
by Faiz Ahmad FaizEnglish version by Ivan M. Granger
Original Language Urdu
Speak! Your words are free.
Speak! Your tongue is still your own.
Your body is yours, strong and straight.
Speak! Your life is still your own.
Look! In the forge's flames,
how your steel glows red.
See how the locked doors have opened
and every chain breaks.
Speak! The time left to you is enough.
Before body and tongue give out.
Speak! For truth still survives
Speak! Say what is in your heart!
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It is worth taking some time to really pay attention to the news and some of the troubling events taking place right now. But it takes a deeper reading than we get in most US news sources to have a sense of what is really happening. The killing of the Palestinian protesters in Gaza in the wake of the US embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The decision by the US to unilaterally break the Iran nuclear agreement, which was the only real reason the Iranian government had to cooperate. The US government tightening its alliances with the extremist governments in Saudi Arabia and Israel, who seem to want to foment a war with Iran.
Events can unfold in several different directions, some terrible to contemplate.
In such moments, the temptation is to turn away, to shut the heart down, to focus exclusively on our own lives, our own families and circle of friends. I would suggest that we can handle more than we think we can. The heart, to be whole, must break a thousand times and be ready to break again. An empathic heart is what keeps us alive and on the spiritual path. A feeling heart reaches out to embrace even those outside our circles of familiarity, expanding our own sense of who we are.
And we have bodies, vehicles of action in the world. They are meant to express that awakened heart. They are meant to help, to soothe, to show kindness, to stop harm, for that is what the heart wishes.
And we can speak. For speaking is an act of the living, an affirmation of one's humanity. Speaking is about connection, sharing one's state of mind that we may meet one another in the currents of truth.
Speak! For truth still survives
Speak! Say what is in your heart!
Though speech we touch each other, heart to heart.
Speak.
