Mourning and Other Activities
You take faith and a horse –
Reasonably Arab looking one – feed him
Rusgullas and milk for a year.
While you fatten him you terrorize him
With different Asiatic techniques
Into mildness and meekness.
Then you take a procession or
Two out in the month of June
With the horse leading
Properly bedecked with buntings and ribbons.
You mourn and cry your heart out in the heat,
And those of us who have faith
Then crawl under the belly of the horse
Whenever it comes to a stop.
And between the four brown hooves
Take refuge from the sun.
Raza Ali Hasan came to America in 1991. He earned a BA and an MA from the University of Texas, Austin, and an MFA from Syracuse University.
In a 2006 interview with the Syracuse Daily Orange, Hasan noted, “I am not interested in protest poetry or activist poetry. My aim is to draw a more accurate, full picture of the world. In order to have the whole picture, you need to bring the whole world in.” In a 2009 In Stereo Press review of 67 mogul miniatures, critic Daniel Dissinger observed, “With his use of violent imagery, mixed with sheer poetic artistry, Raza Ali Hasan constructs a sprawling world that fits in the palm of your hand.” Hasan’s poetry addresses political and cultural themes with imagery both sharply focused and set within a moving, unstable field.
Hasan’s poetry collections include Grieving Shias (2006) and 67 mogul miniatures (2008), which loosely adapt traditional Urdu poet Mohammad Iqbal’s formal structure of musaddas, sets of three rhyming couplets containing a complaint addressed to God, followed by God’s reply.
Hasan lives in Boulder and has taught at the University of Colorado and Iowa State University.