Rehan Qayoom

Game Royale.

2012-01-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

"By the way if ever you want to ride, just let Lynch know and he'll sort it out for you."

"Oh, Papa, Cousin Matthew doesn't ride."

"I ride."

"And do you hunt?"

"No I don't hunt."

"I dare say there's not much opportunity in Manchester."

"Are you a hunting family?"

"Families like ours are always hunting families."

"Not always. Billy Skelton won't have them on his land."

"But all the Skeltons are mad."

"Do you hunt?"

"Occasionally. I suppose you're more interested in books than country sports."

"I probably am. You'll tell me that's rather unhealthy."

"Not unhealthy. Just unusual. Among our kind of people."

(Julian Fellowes. Downton Abbey).

O for "illicit" venison, I side with Alexander Pope's verse about preferring a rogue with it 'to a saint without.' Pope liked his 'ven'son'. His letters often mention dining on friendly venison with quite some relish (which about 70 years ago would have contravened rule 47b of the Emergency Butchery Act). Do you fancy the haunch yourself, or "half an 'aunch" (quoth Phoebe in Goodnight Sweetheart: London Pride)? Or would you prefer pheasant? In India there is a traditional succulent curry prepared from the freshly-hunted leg meat and pheasant together. Enjoy these biting lines from Pope's 'Epistle To Allen Bathurst: Of the Use of Riches':

What made Directors cheat in South-sea year?
To live on ven'son when it sold so dear.
Ask you why Phryne the whole Auction buys?
Phryne foresees a General Excise,
Why she and Sappho raise that monstrous sum?
Alas! they fear a Man will cost a plum.

Ted Hughes Commemoration in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

2011-12-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

Minute after minute, aeon after aeon,
Nothing lets up or develops.
And this is neither a bad variant nor a tryout.
This is where the staring angels go through.
This is where all the stars bow down.
(Ted Hughes. 'Pibroch').

I received an invitation to attend the unveiling ceremony of a memorial stone to Ted Hughes by Seamus Heaney in Westminster Abbey. I set off at 3pm and realised half-way to the station that I had forgotten the invitation card at home so had to walk back to pick it up.

Walking past the Houses of Parliament I saw the Home Secretary Theresa May coming out in her car. The abbey always looks really awesome in the floodlight. I entered through the arch and the East Cloisters which were really dark and atmospheric. It was quite an experience walking through the dimly lit cloisters with tombstones on the floor until I reached an area that had been cordoned off where people gathered slowly. A glance upon the floor revealed a tombstone marked Aphra Behn, the Restoration dramatist. I spotted Simon Armitage and got up from where I was sitting upon the stone benches along the walls to talk to him about his work on 'Sir Gawain & the Green Knight' and its relation to the eighteenth chapter of The Holy Quran but then changed my mind and sat back down thinking, perhaps, that this was not the occasion for such talk. As always everybody always knows each other or seems to, nobody ever knows me so I have a habit of taking out my book to read. I read a bit of Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life by Adam Feinstein before we were ushered in through a door leading to Poets' Corner. There was a lady to my right who asked how or if I had a Hughes' connection. I was a bit nonplussed but replied that I was just an admirer of his work and that I had gotten into Plath first but then really discovered his work when I was at college after Birthday Letters came out. She remarked that she was a librarian at Cambridge University where she had seen him read in the seventies. A lady to my left observed that she was from Cambridge too. I spotted Andrew Motion and Hughes' widow Carol dressed beautifully in opal, she laid flowers from the garden of Court Green (their house in Devon) at the memorial.

Sitting in Poets' Corner among so many countless tombs and memorials to writers, poets, historians and theologians and just being present in Westminster Abbey is always a spiritually uplifting experience. The intensity of historical presence is overpowering. The Urdu poet Parveen Shakir wrote a poem on this sense of being overwhelmed by history in her poem 'Westminster Abbey'. All the seats had the Order of the Service placed upon them. Dr John Hall, the Dean said "We have come to Poets' Corner, where the word is celebrated. Here Geoffrey Chaucer lived and died, and was buried in 1400. Here William Caxton set up his printing press in 1476. Here writing in English and its publication were first achieved."
"Buried here is all that could be buried of Edmund Spenser and John Dryden, Tennyson, and Browning. They are remembered; their words live on." Lord Evans of Temple Guiting read from Hughes' letter to Plath of 1 and 2 October 1956 scientifically arguing in favour of reading aloud. Hughes says that was how all reading was done until the invention of Caxton's press. It is an incredible passage to read. This was followed by a reading of Hughes' poems 'Full Moon and Little Frieda' 'Anniversary' and 'Where I Sit Writing My Letter' by Juliet Stevenson. The acoustics of the abbey offering a resound. Then Heaney who I saw for the first time delivered an address, beginning with a quotation from Beowulf and remarking upon Hughes' natural use of the alliterative Anglo-Saxon meter in, for example, the first line of 'The Thought Fox' and in 'Fern'. But, he said, he did not intend to lecture on Hughes' uses of language and meter. This was followed by him unveiling the memorial stone, Daniel Huws' reading of 'In Memory of Ted Hughes' by the poet R. S. Thomas and Heaney's readings of 'Some Pike for Nicholas' 'For the Duration' 'That Morning'.

The Order of Service contained some interesting points about Poets' Corner: Chaucer was buried here not because he was a great poet but because he had served as the Clerk of Works to the palace of Westminster, Joseph Addison first referred to 'the poetical quarter' in The Spectator and the first written use of the title that is known was in a poem of 1733 'Upon the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey'.

In all about 300 people attended. As everyone walked past the plaque I glanced at the names on the chits upon the chairs, lots of lords and ladies and one 'Mrs T. S. Eliot' who I've never seen and didn't catch this time either. There were refreshments afterwards for those with a blue ticket. I did have 2, one white and one blue but I'm certain it wasn't the blue one so I made my way back. There were carol singers at Westminster station singing 'Ding dong merrily on high':

So we found the end of our journey.

So we stood, alive in the river of light
Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.
(Ted Hughes. 'That Morning').

Reviews By Christina Westover.

2011-11-27T09:00:00.000-08:00


Available from Lulu. £10.80 (Kindle £6.62). 67 pages.

Rehan Qayoom's Prose 1997-2008 is a fantastic read which is diverse and covers everything from spirituality and mythology to love, prose, and the documenting of the modern world as he sees it.

He writes of the importance of maintaining personal integrity, spiritual integrity, and artistic integrity at all costs. He says in order to be effective at documenting history through artistic means, it is essential that the artist work diligently to maintain a purity of spirit.

He states that poetry is one of the most powerful of all arts, for it creates a portrait of beauty from chaos and disorder. However, poetry is more than provocative thoughts, it requires purity of form and consistency of "language sanctity."

Qayoom's book is a work of superior intelligence and wisdom, written from a sincere desire to share his love of literature with others. Like all Great Teachers, Qayoom's written works are gifts to those seeking inspiration!

Available from Lulu. £6.99. 67 pages.

Rehan Qayoom is a poet with a romanticism which lingers beneath intelligent verses as the author writes of what it is to be an individual in a world where many neglect to contemplate the meaning of their own lives.

About Time reminds us in more than one way, that life truly is what you make of it. It is every individual's responsibility to contribute beauty and greatness to this planet, and Qayoom's inspiring verses urge all to do so.

Qayoom's passion for literature speaks volumes of how connected he feels with history and persons of the past. He speculates, if one consumes himself with literature from the past, is he being present for today?

About Time is a beautifully written collection of deeply moving poetry which inspires the reader into action. Qayoom's writings, are the writings of one who has mastered his craft! Excellent read!

Christina Westover's is the author of Precipice (Black Rose Writing, 2010) and Poisoning Sylvie (World Publishing Limited, 2011). Born and raised in California, Christina currently resides in San Francisco.

8 New Poems.

2011-11-03T21:41:00.000-07:00

8 new poems by the Urdu poet Parveen Shakir freshly adapted into English.

Duty

‘Sweetheart!

I regret

I cannot come to you this weekend again

I’ve some important business to see to!’

Darling!

I have understood

Your business

Perhaps your Chief Director’s wife is alone again

This weekend

11 March 2011.

Revelation

Narrated Aisha (Mother of the Faithful): 'The commencement of the Divine Inspiration to Allah's Apostle was in the form of good dreams which came true like bright daylight, and then the love of seclusion was bestowed upon him. He used to go in seclusion in the cave of Hira where he used to worship continuously for many days before his desire to see his family. He used to take with him the journey food for the stay and then come back to [his wife] Khadija to take his food like-wise again till suddenly the Truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hira. The angel came to him and asked him to read. The Prophet replied 'I do not know how to read.'

The Prophet added 'The angel caught me forcefully and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read and I replied 'I do not know how to read.' Thereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second time till I could not bear it any more and passed out. He then released me and again asked me to read but again I replied 'I do not know how to read (or what shall I read)?' Thereupon he caught me for the third time and pressed me, and then released me and said 'Recite -- In the name of thy Lord. Who created everyone. Who created Mankind of coagulated blood. Recite (for) Thy Lord is the Noblest One.'

(al-Bukhari, Imam abu-Abdullah Muhammad bin-Ismael. Sahih Bukhari: Book of Revelation).

It was such a strange time

When all form of worship was bleary-eyed

And all devotions had completely lost their vision

People beseeched blessings and goodly favours

From idols their own hands had carved!

But one

Who had yet to recognise himself

Was involved in a canny problem

So he bore the cross of such insatiate griefs

He is not of them, who would he be

To taste the tormenting agonies of anonymity

Far from the city of Azar

He granted all his moments in time to the dreamy stillness of the cave of Hira

This was the meditation of thought

As well as an affirmation of an invisible spirit of Complete Being

That night was another night of secrets

The surroundings were muted

Just for the moment

And the necks of the winds were severed from their bodies

The heartbeat of the stars had momentarily paused

As if the pulse of their very existence had ceased!

And the receding moments were stilled into fright

There and then a light echoed with all the colours

Of Beauty and Majesty

'Recite!'

'I don't recite!'

'Recite!'

'I don't recite!'

'Recite!'

'(But) what shall I recite?'

Recite -- In the name of thy Lord

Who created everyone

Who created Mankind of coagulated blood

Recite (for) Thy Lord is the Noblest One

(And) Who taught by the pen

He alone taught man

What he did not know ......'

The dumb surroundings seemed to echo with chanting Recite

All those words, which had been swept away

In the flood of dark

Began journeying back

Upon waves of light

Suns of awareness were descending

Into the casement of vacuity

In that one moment

My Unlettered One

Had become a city of knowledge!

5 March 2011.

To A Friend

Girl! These moments are clouds

You let them pass and they're gone

Soak up their moist touch

Don't waste a single drop

Drench yourself for as long as

Your inner Earth remains thirsty

Listen to me, learn from me

Downpours don't remember their way back

The summer brightness you go out to dry your hair in

Cannot read the road signs!

23 May 2007.

Creator of the Universe!

Look me in the eye.

At the smile

Playing upon my lips

At the glint

Twinkling in my eyes

What does it remind you of?

Do you see anything reflecting

In my tears?

I bet you are feeling something familiar

At this beautiful time

Because you know

How great it is

Yes yes - you are right

Today I too –

Gave birth to life!

June 2009.

To a Victorian

Rather than keeping me

Tucked away

In your heart

Instead of wasting your life like this,

Trying to practice the mores of the Victorians

In the reign of Elizabeth II

Scoring world literature left right and centre

For the correct form of a one-word conversation

Rather than linger long lonesome hours

‘Neath my window each year

The first day of Spring

Just come suddenly

One day

From nowhere in particular

And taking my

In your arms

Turn a perfect circle!

4 July 2011.

Poem for Forugh Farrokzad

This day the chief jurist has admitted

That the crop of sinners is ripe once again

Go tell the Shah’s council
All tyrants await

With baited breath

His Highness’ verdict

So they can serve in holy reverence – To carry out the command

To choose who to behead who to topple off their pedestal

Whose hands to sever, whose tongue to slice out

Whose livelihood is to be discontinued

Where to entice the hungry, with food they cannot have

Where to distribute pardons

Where to proclaim the edicts

Of death, by stoning

How many pre-pubescent girls,

Are to be gang-raped by generals (on bloodied bed sheets)

Which petty criminals are to be posted

At the Plaza Square staring at its ever flowing fountains

How many innocents to drag to the gallows and the hangman’s noose

Your Highness may command as he wills!
I beseech this much

That the Royal Statements be kept

Confined to Private Conversation

Otherwise

There’ll be legal hurdles!

4 July 2011.

Loneliness

This scenic evening of ours

Mingled with the perfume

Of your garment

With the burgeoning of my vision

Will last some mere moments

Just now

A star will unwind itself upon the horizon

Just then

Its winking will beckon to your heart

A memory

A tale of separation

Something not done

An unfulfilled dream

Something not said

To someone!

We should have met

In an age of gracefulness

In another heaven

In a different country!

11 March 2011.

In a way we are all Dr Faustus

In a way

We are all Dr Faustus

Some barter their souls

For pleasure’s sake

And some under blackmail of duress

Some pawn their eyes

To begin trading in dreams

Others are led to mortgage their entire mind-set

It has only to be seen

What currency is in circulation

So according to an estimate of the Wall Street of life

Among those who can afford to buy, sell or invest

Self Respect is a popular commodity!

2011.

A Bibliography.

2011-10-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

Revised & included in Prose 1997 - 2008.

Letter in Sunday Times. (7 January 2001).
'Thesauruses' 'Omar Khayyam & the Rubaiyat' www.optimnem.co.uk 'The Passion of the Christ' – View from a Muslim': The Lamp & Owl. (April/May 2004).
Tariq Monthly. (2005 & October 2010).
Barking & Dagenham Recorder, 22 December 2005, 1 June 2006.
'A Review of Noor by Geoffrey Armes': Imaani Magazine. (December 2006).
'A Review of Ten Feet High by Andrea Corr'. (26 June 2007).

‘Von herzen, möge es zu herzen gehen!’ 'Poetry' Interpoetry (July 2007).
'Poetry': Kritya (Volume 3, part 5. November 2007).
'Homage to Barking': Newsletter of the Barking & District Historical Society. (2007).

'A Cockney Favourite': Community Times, Romford. (June/July 2008).
Message from Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad - Khalifatul Masih V.
'I am the Master of the Bezels' - Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad on ibn 'Arabi. www.alislam.org

Revised & included in About Time: Poems & Adaptation 1993 - 2010
&
Parveen Shakir Adapted into English (forthcoming).

'Anthem' in OPS Times (November 1996).
Atomic Petals.
Shannon’s Poetry Café.
Wandering Dog.
Poetry Circle (8 June, 20 July, 17 August 2001).
'Love Letter' 'Loving Feelings' 'Love Is Better Than Wine' 'Attention' 'Arrival' 'Stay Close' 'Sonnet' in The Lamp & Owl. (November 2001, January 2002, May 2005).
'Pygmalion' in Sentinel Poetry (Third Anniversary Issue, December 2005).
Poet's Letter (2006).
'Under the Duvet' 'The Path of Memory's not for Single Men' 'Poem' Like a Lie' 'So Many Obstacles to Overcome' in Poetry Cemetery.

Kritya (Volume 1, part 9. February 2006 / Volume 2, part 11. April 2007):

'Stay Close' 'Modern Snow' 'AFRICA COME BACK' 'FRAGMENTS, not a Meal' 'Like a Lie' 'Crusade' 'Love Letter' 'Sonnet' 'Poem' 'No it is not that the allure of the sun’s stilettos' 'Under the Duvet' 'Truth' 'A Wish' 'Love': (1, 2, 3, 4).

'So Many Obstacles to Overcome' in Autumn Leaves (vol 11, July 2007
'Words' in The Beat (August 2007).
'Poem' 'Ub mujhey hijr sei riha karna' 'Words' 'Ophiuchos' www.poetcasting.co.uk (2007).
'Post-dinner Item' 'Soliloquy' 'Tomato Ketchup' in Ygdrasil. (October 2007).
'A Wish' 'A difficult question' 'Advice from a senior executive' Upon Clifton Bridge' 'Advice' 'I Should Have Known' www.razarumi.com (Link 1 & 2).
'Bad Language & Religious Slogans'. (5 March 2008).
'Under the Duvet' & 'Ophiuchos'. www.blogtalkradio.com
'A Difficult Question'. Awen 58 (June 2009).

'So Many Obstacles to Overcome' 'Prism' 'Moon' 'Upon Clifton Bridge' 'To H' The Delinquent. (Issues 3, 9, 13 & 14).
'Post-dinner Item' & 'Soliloquy' in Poetry Combination Module 30.
'So Many Obstacles to Overcome' and 'Prism' in Ancient Heart (vol 5, number 3, July 2007 & 21 December 2010).

'Modern Snow' & 'Soliloquy' in Living Poets. (Winter Edition, February 2011).
'I Should Have Known' 'Prism' 'Moon' 'Anthem' 'My Candle Is Lit On My Table' in Pens on Fire. (July 2011).
www.xstreameast.co.uk
'Found Inscribed' & 'I Know You Won't Reply To Me' in Essence. (Forthcoming 2012).

Anthologies:

'Loving Feelings' in Loving Feelings (Robooth, 2000).
'Burlesque on a Poem by Dylan Thomas' in Twilight Road. (Dogma Publications, 2004).

Urdu Poetry.

'Ub mujhey hijr sei riha karna' 'Sarapa dua ho geya hun khudaya' Sada Urdu Monthly (vol 4/14, 5/5).

'Tevar bhi badal jaen manzir bhi badal jaey' 'Men hoon too ho sharab ho saqi' (Nawa e Waqt, 30 June - 6 July 2006).

'Miltey jultey hayat kei saey' Ahmadiyya Bulletin. (January 2004).
'Teri majlis sei teri sahr bayani sei uttha' (The Awam News, 25 April - 9 May 2001).

'I Am the Master of the Bezels' - Ahmadiyya on ibn 'Arabi.

2011-08-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

'I am the Master of the Bezels' is my compilation of the writings of Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, (1835 - 1908), the holy founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the Caliphs on the Sufi saint Muhiyudeen ibn al-'Arabi. The 3 chapters thus far complete are produced below -

1. 'I am the Master of the Bezels' - Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad on ibn 'Arabi.

2. Hadhrat al-Hajj Hafiz Hakim Maulana Nooruddin - Khalifatul Masih I on ibn 'Arabi.

3. Hadhrat Hafiz Mirza Nasir Ahmad - Khalifatul Masih III on ibn 'Arabi. (Under Revision).

2011-08-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

Rabia Basri may Allah be pleased with her said that I have considered it a law to myself that my real share in this world is that of anguish and suffering and if any joy reaches me then I consider that an extra bonus which I do not deserve. So a believer ought to bear all the discomforts and bitterness from this mortal world and be in the midst of its battleground. We are no more unique than the prophets and the Imams, in fact the truth is that pleasures and friendships and aspirations in seeking the Divine can only really be sensed when one bears all hardships with patience and says like Prophet Job 'Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither.' [1]

(Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Letter to Hadhrat al-Hajj Hafiz Hakim Molana Noorudin. March 1887. Maktubat e Ahmad ii [Correspondence of Ahmad]. 3 vols, Nazarat Isha'at, 2008. 29).

[1] The Holy Bible. Job 1: 21. (King James Authorised Version).

The Golden Age of Islam.

2011-07-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

A documentary about the role of Islam in the fields of science and medicine.

In Memoriam: Morney Wilson.

2011-07-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

Morney Shayne Wilson was born on April 3, 1969 in Scotland. She studied at Fortismere School and graduated in English Literature from the University of Sussex. She worked as an administration officer at Middlesex University. Morney was a regular contributor to the online Sylvia Plath Forum moderated by Elaine Connell and her poems were published on several websites. Her collection of poems was published as I Am The Blast From Your Past. The singer/songwriter Barry Crawford has set several of her poems to music in albums produced as The Morney Set (2008) and Morn (2011). Some first included in her posthumous poetry collection Martyr Doll. Her prose has been collected in the volume Remains, both of these have been edited by myself together with a compilation of The Recordings, all of which are being published here for the first time. Morney Wilson passed away in London in November 2010. 4 poems by Morney have been published in Plath Profiles 4, the interdisciplinary journal for Sylvia Plath studies. She was very excited about their being accepted just before she passed away:

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

(Ted Hughes. 'The Thought-Fox').

The Pink Room

Where I am safe.

When you get to the pink room

do not forget to leave her

a rose.

I want her to know

we have remembered the pink room,

I want her to remember me.

I dreamt of the pink room last

night, of a time when it kept me safe,

a time when it kept her safe.

The pink room is hidden from view

now, has been stripped bare of the

lilac, the silver – someone

I will never know has carelessly

splashed blue paint over my memories.

If you should go to the pink room,

you know you will see me there.

I never could leave the pink room –

remember to leave me a rose.

From Martyr Doll. Edited by Rehan Qayoom, (2011).

Complete List of the Works of Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835 - 1908).

2011-06-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

I now distribute those treasures which were buried

For thousands of years if someone is desirous

This is a complete list of all the books authored by Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad عليه السلام the holy founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community whose service in the field of literature earned him the Divine title 'Sultan of the Pen.' The purpose of this list is to offer a chronological list of all his books in the original language alongside the available translations of the full book in English published by Islam International Publications Ltd (unless stated otherwise).

The Ruhani Khazain is a 23-volume set of the original books. An Introduction to the Hidden Treasures of Islam is a book comprising of introductions to each of the works. Select translations have appeared as a 5-volume set titled The Essence of Islam.

1. Purani Tahrirein [Early Writings]. (1878, 1879, Anwar Ahmadiyya Press, 1899).

2. Barahin e Ahmadiyya [Arguments in Support of 'The Holy Quran' & the Prophethood of the

Holy Prophet]. 5 Vols. (Safir e Hind Press 1880, 1882, Riyadh e Hind 1884, Anwar Ahmadiyya

Machine Press, 1905).

3. Surma Chashm Arya [Guidance for the Aryas]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1886).

4. Shahna e Haq [Bugle of Truth]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1887).

5. Sabz Ishtihar [The Green Announcement]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1888. English: 2008).

6. Fat'h e Islam [Victory of Islam]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1891. English: 1973, 1996).

7. Tadhih e Maram [Elucidation of Objectives]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1891. English: 1971, 2004).

8. Izala e Auham [The Removal of Misconceptions]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1891).

9. al-Haq Mubahisa Ludhiana [The Ludhiana Debate]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1891).

10. al-Haq Mubahisa Delhi [The Delhi Debate]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1891).

11. Asmani Faisala [The Heavenly Decree]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1891. English: 2006).

12. Nishan e Asmani [The Heavenly Sign]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1892. English: 2005).

13. Ek Isai kei Tin Sawal or un kei Jawabat [Three Questions by a Christian & their Answers].

(Anjuman Himayat e Islam, 1892. English: 1972, 2008).

14. Aina e kamalt e Islam [The Mirror of the Excellences of Islam]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1893).

15. Barakatud Dua [Blessings of Prayer]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1893. English: 1973, 2007).

16. Hujjatul Islam [The Proof of Islam]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1893).

17. Sachai ka Izhar [The Truth Revealed]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1893. English: 2010).

18. Jang e Muqaddas [A Holy War]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1893).

19. Shahadatul Quran [Testimony of Quran]. (Punjab Press, 1893).

20. Tohfa e Baghdad [A Gift for Baghdad]. (Punjab Press, 1893).

21. Karamatus Sadiqin [The Miracles of the Truthful]. (Punjab Press, 1893).

22. Hamamatul Bushra [The Harbinger of Good News]. (Punjab Press, 1894).

23. Noorul Haq [The Light of Truth]. (Mustafai Press & Mufid e Am Press, 1894).

24. Itmamul Hujjah [The Final Argument]. (Gulzar Muhammadi Press, 1894).

25. Sirrul Khilafah [Secret of Caliphate]. (Riyadh e Hind, 1894).

26. Awarul Islam [The Light of Islam]. (Punjab Press, 1894).

27. Minanur Rahman [The Blessings of the Gracious God]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1895. English: Ahmadiyya

Muslim Mission Nigeria, 1979).

28. Ziaul Haq [The Torch of Truth]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1895).

29. Noorul Quran [The Light of Quran]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1895).

30. Miyarul Mazahib [The Criterion for Religions]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1895. English: 2007).

31. Arya Dharam [The Aryah Faith]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1895).

32. Satt Bachan [The True Word]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1895).

33. Islami Usul ki Philosophy [The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam]. (Matba Siddiqi, 1896.

English: 1979, 2010).

34. Anjam e Atham [The Death of Atham]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1897).

35. Siraj e Munir [The Shining Lamp]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1897).

36. Istifta' [An Enquiry]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1897).

37. Hujjatullah [God's Final Argument]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1897).

38. Tohfa e Qeysariyya [A Gift for the Queen]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1897).

39. Mahmood ki Amin [Mahmood's Amin]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1897).

40. Sirajuddin Isai kei Char Sawalon kei Jawab [Four Questions by Mr. Sirajuddin, a Christian,

Answered]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1897. English: 1968, 2009).

41. Kitabul Bariyyah [The Acquittal]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1898. English Translation as An Account of the Exoneration & A Brief Sketch of my Life).

42. Al Balagh [The Message or a Cry of Pain]. (Book Depot Qadian, 1898).

43. Zurooratul Imam [The Need for the Imam]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1898. English: 2007).

44. Najmul Huda [The Star the Guides]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1898. English: Ahmadiyyah Anjuman Isha'at

Islam 1933, 1960).

45. Raz e Haqiqat [The Secret of Truth]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1898).

46. Kashful Ghita' [The Truth Unveiled]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1898. Partially Translated: 1898).

47. Ayyamus Sulha [The Age of Peace]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1899).

48. Haqiqatul Mahdi [The Truth About the Mahdi]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1899).

49. Masih Hindustan Mein [Jesus in India]. (Anwar e Ahmadiyya, 1899. English: 1944, 2003).

50. Sitara e Qeysariyya [The Star of the Empress]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1899).

50. Roidad e Jalsa e Dua [The Proceedings of a Prayer Meeting]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1900).

52. Tiryaqul Quloob [Panacea of the Souls] (Ziyaul Islam, 1899, 1902).

53. Tohfa e Ghaznaviyya [A Gift for Ghaznavi]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

54. Khutba Ilhamiyya [The Revealed Sermon]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

55. Lujjatun Noor [An Ocean of Light]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1910).

56. Government Angrezi or Jihad [The British Government & Jihad]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1900.

English: 2006).

57. Ijazul Masih [Miracles of the Messiah]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1901).

58. Eik Ghalati ka Izala [A Misconception Removed]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1901. English: 1978, 2007).

59. Tohfa Golarrviyya [A Gift for Golarrvi]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

60. Araba'in [The Forty]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

61. Dafiul Bala [Defense Against the Plague]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

62. al-Huda [Guidance for Perceiving Minds]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

63. Nuzoolul Masih [The Second Coming of the Messiah]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

64. Gunah sei Nijat Kyoonkar Mil Sakti Hei [How to be Free from Sin]. (Review of Religions, 1902.
English: 1902, 2008).

65. Ismat e Anbiya [The Sinlessness of Prophets]. (Review of Religions, 1902).

66. Kashti e Nooh [Noah's Ark]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

67. Tohfatul Nadwah [A Gift for an-Nadwah]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902. English: 2010).

68. Ijaz e Ahmadi [The Miracle of Ahmad]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

69. Review bur Mubahisa Battalvi o Chakrralivi [The Review of the Debate with Battalvi &

Chakrralvi]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1902).

70. Mawahibur Rahman [Bounty of God]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1903).

71. Nasim e Dawut [An Invitation]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1903).

72. Sanatan Dharam [The Sanatan Faith]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1903).

73. Tadhkiratush Shahadatayn [The Two Martyrs]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1903).

74. Seeratul Abdal [Qualities of the Saints]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1903).

75. Lecture Lahore. (Rifah e Am Steam Press, 1904. English: Review of Religions

1904, 2008).

76. Lecture Sialkot. (Mufid e Am Press, 1904. English: 2007).

77. Islam ki Haqiqat [The Truth about Islam]. (Review of Religions Urdu, March 1904).

78. Lecture Ludhiana. (Magazine Press, 1906. English: 2003).

79. Risala al-Waiyyat [The Will]. (Magazine Press, 1905. English: 1997, 2004).

80. Chashma e Masihi [Fountain of Christianity]. (Magazine Press, 1906. English: 1970, 2008).

81. Tajalliyyat e Ilahiyya [Divine Manifestations]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1906. English: 2006).

82. Qadian kei Aryah or Ham [The Aryas of Qadian]. (Magazine Press, 1907).

83. Haqiqatul Wahi [The Philosophy of Revelation]. (Magazine Press, 1907).

84. Chashma e Ma'rifat [The Fountain of Gnosis]. (Anwar e Ahmadiyya Press, 1908).

85. Islam kei Samarat [The Fruits of Islam]. (al-Hakm, 18 February 1908),

86. Paigham e Sulh' [A Message of Peace]. (Ziyaul Islam, 1908. English: 1968, 1996, 2007).

87. Majmuah Ishtiharat [Announcements]. 3 Vols.

88. Malfoozat [Discources]. 5 Vols.

89. Maktubat e Ahmad [Letters of Ahmad]. (3 Vols, 2009).

90. Tadhkirah [Tadhkirah: Dreams, Visions & Revelations]. (English: 1976, 2009).
91. Durr e Samin [Poems]. (Separate Editions of Urdu and Persian poetry).

Thoughts on ‘Eternal Story' by Hollace M. Metzger.

2011-06-09T18:44:00.001-07:00

Available from Lulu. £10.34 (Kindle £6.46). 212 Pages.

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are constantly homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. ^[1]

Everything to do with Hollace M. Metzger is art, every word she utters transmogrifies itself into poetry so that one cannot help but come back to the work again and again. Like history, it is cyclical. And with this new book; daylight has broken. Her voice and her poems can never tire one. Her paintings are an endless kaleidoscope of labyrinthine meanings and emotions, they are stubbornly direct in conveying their message, in making themselves felt. We are bravely offered, raw and throbbing, the timely truths that can sometimes be problematic, painful, disorderly and ugly and we are shown how all can turn to beauty and joy at a slight change of perspective. They are like the sun which rises and sinks diurnally yet every rising heralds a new dawn.

Can one but help be immersed in Metzger's work, it keeps me dazzled at nights. I read everything cyclically. In dreams of showing an essay I've written of just over a page in red ink. Of mention of my photo-phobia and her asking a class of students to draw the curtains:

I know what you do
when he makes love to you,
how he doesn’t like
when you wear your hair up,
But, you shouldn’t worry
because he will never turn away,
leave you or lean my way.
We may touch, but only kiss
in our fantasies while we
share a coffee in silence.
Never, in
his wildest dreams,
would he think
of committing himself to me.
It’s too easy.

('To the Jealous Girlfriend'). [2]

For me those moments spent in such regal company are of strange and secret whisperings:

The surroundings were muted
Just for the moment
The necks of the winds had been severed from their bodies
The heartbeat of the stars had momentarily paused
As if the pulse of their very existence had ceased!
And the receding moments were stilled into fright

The Iranian poet Ziba Karbassi says that 'The poem is the result of a state of restlessness in the poet's soul which is usually marked by heavy breathings and severe panting before and after the birth of a poem. It is in the poetry of gasp, that we counter eroticism in language.' Breath is life-giving. Sound is created on the out-breath (except in certain African languages which begin some words with an implosion of in-breathed sound):

The sounds that we make depend on where the breath stops on its passage from the lungs to the lips. [3]

The Universe is the visible articulation of the Divine 'exhalation' of the All-Compassionate God, blown from a state of latency into outward forms whose love englobes like the breath underlying all sounds: Words are from letters, letters from air, air from the Breath of the Compassionate. Through the names effects appear in the created worlds, and they are the goal of the knowledge of Jesus. Through these words man requires the Presence of the Compassionate to give of Its very Self that which will give life to what was asked for by these words. Thus the order becomes eternally circular. [4]

I could write (not talk) endlessly on what a great friend, collaborator, Muse I have in the Beauty and Grace that is Hollace Metzger. One of the chosen few who have made me less unsure without the so-thought necessity of their physical presence whether anyone ever understood my oracles of 'Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles' [5] and suchlike. An emotion I tried to express in 'Soliloquy.’

Re 'Stalkings' there is no girl (let me tell you) down my street but that doesn't mean I do not dream though they do not do but:

Some other path will branch out from that point on
And hand in hand we will begin the journey
In the shadows of your tresses to the movement of your arms

And to say this is to be cyclical as all things are. **That is the essential lesson of life, of flux within its continuum.** [6] I can hear the most sublime music and a beautiful love poem in 'Violin Heart' - "Tomorrow will be okay."

I have some comments on 'Fame' on a love that dares not name me now that had promised to remember me but now rejects, jilts, reviles even as fame accompanies that one (now passed around like a wineglass) from place to place, person to person, heart to heart:

Forgotten
in their present state,
my possessions
have been diminished
to people as memories
and this pen
corroding that which
was left unspoken.

This is literally so in my case at present. Soon, soon I shall corrode what 'was left unspoken' into blogs that are left like dream-letters on doorsteps albeit:

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you. [7]

The 'Prithee' in '© Facebook' reminds me of some lines I translated in my poem 'Catullus in London' via some lines of Keats. [8] They are:

'Yours the rhyme in every line, my Muse
Sweetheart, be my Valentine, my Muse
Show how your dimpling kisses warm the waders
Lesbia irenic, earnest, tell the riaders
Tomorrow’s autumns of delations and
Noyades the unrepentant thieves command
Cadaverous faces in the cancerous gloom
Our thousand thousand more and more will bloom’ [9]

**My thoughts on 'AND/RE' make me think of the second song from Tagore's Nobel prize winning Gitanjali:**

When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.
       All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony - and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.
           I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.
         I touch by the edge of the far spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.
         Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord. [10]

And of my lines from 'Love is Better Than Wine'

I learn to live with what I've got and just then
Teeming tears of grief, flaccid pain
Tell me what I never had and where and when
       My eyes can't contain
Light enough to know our days won't return
And it feels like I am close to passing out
Now the wings of tiny little angels burn
         What's love all about?
Grace me with your Chardonnay kisses tonight
Scintillating stature in fur coat soused in
Bathed luminosities and glinting light
            Let our life begin [11]

So that I fear that I shall greet her in silence with tears:

If ever again we do see eye to eye
Some other path will branch out from that point on
And hand in hand we will begin the journey
In the shadows of your tresses to the movement of your arms
The other thing is also sorcery for the heart knows
There is no turning no desert no spell
Veiled in which my months can pass
If the path of life runs with your thoughts - All is well
If you do not turn round to look it doesn’t matter ^[12]

'First Valentine' is one of the many many amazing poems of Metzger that arouse, cajole, enviegle me (rather like the dragon of Communism in Revelations which has been chained up for a millennium and would be unleashed upon the world in the Latter Days before the Apocalypse) into taking notes as I read the wonder words, hear them, re-read them repeatedly. Very few writers these days write with such clear beauty, grace, such lucidity, such purity. And I do not read little. It is about all I have done in these last few decades that may be called my life. The comfort and ease with which her pen seems to flow and the command and grasp that Metzger has over subject is of the kind that has been recognised in Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters. That is to say it is not of the usual kind poets utilise but of the rare kind of Hardyesque Hawk's Eye envisionings. Not the marginalia or remains that shock the pious usurper. Compared to, for example, this:

I don't, I DON'T want to take a girl out and spend CIRCA £5 when I can toss off in five minutes, free, and have the rest of the evening to myself. [13]

And you'll see what I'm getting at. The vivid description of the food, the scene reminiscent of Catullus, one or other of his poems where he describes food with similar relish. [14] As I read of future partners whose pleasures lie not in love but in fulfilling bloody-minded, narcissistic, nihilistic expectations, in proving things - I think of the first few lines of Donne's 'The Good Morrow':

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we loved? were we not wean'd till then,
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee. [15]

I do make love outside of my bedroom: I cannot know exactly what I mean when I say this or what it is to say this, I abandoned Life and Love half-way somewhere to be recollected/picked up (if I can rediscover the place I left them) when/if I ever have somewhere to get to and sail calmly on:

Birds claim their territories, talking to one another, and I've accepted that I do not and possibly will never understand them.
(‘Sojournal: Diary of a Fisherwoman in France – Part II’ p 119).

You know Hardy's 'The Darkling Thrush'. He felt the same. Ted Hughes wrote that the whole lure of fishing for him was like the creative act. He would say:

Catching a fish is like writing a poem, a kind of metaphor for the creative act. 'Pike' is very much about that. This idea of pulling something out of the darkness, into the light of consciousness. [16]

Metzger has firmly placed her eternal Parisian hand upon the infernal London hearts of many a poet. 'The Hand' falls into a handsome tradition of poets such as Auden who spoke of hands in some of his poems. There are 2 poems by Ted Hughes on hands (in Moortown Diary and in Birthday Letters). There is 'The hand that signed the paper felled a city;' [17] of Dylan Thomas' poem but that is the Achilles' Heel of hands which permits the lies the robberies the wars the murders. I last held hands a lifetime ago but Betjeman's lines evoke the holding of my hand of one whose prayers stand by my side though he himself could not, when once he held them and gently pressed them as if night would no longer follow us after that evening:

Holding hands our two hearts beating in the bedroom silence round us,
Holding hands and hardly hearing sudden footstep, thud and shriek. [18]

I still have an hefty old desktop, I’m usually the last one to know anything or the last one to buy any new gadget. I didn’t buy a phone until I started university and even now I think I’ve rarely phoned anyone in the last 10 years. I am notorious for it. I hardly know anyone. And so on. And then there is, of course Keats' living hand 'warm and capable' held yet towards Fanny, the hand in which Coleridge felt death at their extra-dimensional and rather bizarre encounter upon Milfield Lane.

**The 'Sojournal' entries are the most unfeigned and lucid prose pieces I have read in a very long time, that the world needs for such things as are noticed, recorded, transformed, healed.**

…

A (digressive) word to the critics: I am thinking of Pope's 'The Dunciad: iv' and these lines:

Roman and Greek Grammarians! know your better:
Author of something yet more great than Letter;
While tow'ring o'er your Alphabet, like Saul,
Stands our Digamma, and o'ertops them all.
'Tis true, on Words is still our whole debate,
Disputes of Me or Te , of aut or at,
To sound or sink in CANO, O or A,
Or give up Cicero to C or K. [19]

And with that, another of my obscure (read crazy) linkages with his 'An Epistle To The Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington' on the subject of architecture. It was occasioned by Burlington's publication, in the previous year (1730), of 'Palladio's Designs of the Baths, Arches, Theatres etc. of Ancient Rome'.

Sorry, even God won't help me! I know that the frigid stoners, the pick-a-pockets, my detractors (being ilk of such as those that criticise Metzger/her work/her art) may well quote me the following in answer as if I Did Not know it:

He has appointed a succession of angels before him and behind him guarding by the Command of Allah. Surely, Allah changes not the condition of a people until they change their own attitude. But when Allah wishes to punish a people there is no repelling it nor have they any protector beside Him. [20]

At the very least they should have the audacity to brave the admission that I am everywhere with my sources and digress like a lunatic: ‘And they said ‘Shall we give up our gods for a mad poet?’ [21] **And whilst reading something in Why the WilloW I thought of how academic study/education can be a barrier to the innocence and beauty of childhood (short of leaving one cold, poor and sober). This is something Betjeman explores in 'Norfolk' his poem of childhood when he says:**

How did the Devil come? When first attack?
The church is just the same, though now I know
Fowler of Louth restored it. Time, bring back
The rapturous ignorance of long ago,
The peace, before the dreadful daylight starts,
Of unkept promises and broken hearts. [22]

There are few, too few pure souls as Metzger in whose case this is untrue. Who can carry that purity, that innocence throughout their lives blending in harmony with the knowledge, the acumen with expertise of subject.

[1] Auden, W. H. ‘In Praise of Limestone.’ Collected Poems. Edited by Edward Mendelson. (Faber & Faber 1976, 1991).

[2] Metzger, Hollace M. Transcriptions of Time. (2009). 195.

[3] Stephen Hirtenstein. The Unlimited Mercifier. (Anqa Publishing, 1999). 225.

[4] ibn al-‘Arabi, Shaykh Muhiyudeen. Futûhât al-Makkiya [The Meccan Revelations]. 2 Vols. Edited by Michel

Chodkiewicz. (Pir Press, 2002, 2004).

[5] Plath, Sylvia. Collected Poems. Edited by Ted Hughes. (Faber & Faber, 1981). 129.

[6] I tend to agree the neorealist view of history being cyclical. The roulette wheel can only bring up the same numbers

again and again: a continual movement, as Anaxagoras observed ‘Nothing is born nor perishes, but things already

existing combine and then separate again.’ Transformed much later by Antoine Lavoisier into the phrase ‘Rien ne se

perd rien ne se crée, tout se transforme.’

[7] The Holy Bible. John 16: 12 - 16. Authorised King James Version.

[8] Ah me ! whither shall I flee?

Thou hast metamorphosed me.

Do not let me sigh and pine,

Prythee be my valentine.

[9] Qayoom, Rehan. About Time. (2011). 14, 15.

[10] Tagore, Rabindranath. Gitanjali: Song Offerings. (Macmillan, 1913).

[11] Qayoom, Rehan. About Time. (2011). 8.

[12] Qayoom, Rehan. About Time. (2011). 54.

[13] Larkin, Philip. To Kingsley Amis. In Andrew Motion Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life. Faber & Faber, 1993).

[14] XXXII.

[15] Donne, John. The Complete English Poems. Edited by A. J. Smith. (Penguin, 1971, corrected reprint 1976, revised 1996).

60.

[16] Cornwell, Tim. ‘Fishing for inspiration – Ted Hughes’ journals.’ The Scotsman. (15 October 2008).

[17] Thomas, Dylan. The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Edited by Daniel Jones. (New Directions, 1971, revised 2003). 75.

[18] Betjeman, Sir John. Collected Poems. John Murray. (2006). 125.

[19] Pope, Alexander. The Poems of Alexander Pope. Edited by John Butt. (Routledge, 1965, corrected 1968). 778.

[20] The Holy Quran. Al Raad [The Thunder]. 12.

[21] The Holy Quran. Assafaat [The Rows]. 37.

[22] Betjeman, Sir John. Collected Poems. John Murray. (2006). 168.

Andrea Corr 'Lifelines'. (2011).

2011-06-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

LIFELINES

About Time: Poems 1993 - 2010.

2011-05-27T13:49:00.000-07:00

2011 | Paperback: List Price: £6.99.
86 pp. | 15.2 × 22.9.
Show Preview.

About Time is the much-anticipated volume of the collected poems of Rehan Qayoom to date. It also includes his adaptations of Urdu poetry into English verse. About Time offers unexpected human emotion mixed with scores of intelligent references extracted from Qayoom's dual-sided heaven of death and life, perspectives from inside Christian and Muslim doctrines looking outwards, even right and left brains. Offering his reader a sense of balance in strife, in love and most everyone's preoccupation with expressing himself, Qayoom replaces our eyes with his. If there is not one heaven, Qayoom's reader has no choice but to enter the other, continuing his days in hope despite how bleak a moment may seem.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal & Ahmadiyya.

2011-05-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

It is mentioned that the famous poet Sir Muhammad Iqbal, arguably the greatest twentieth century poet of the Indian sub-continent was greatly influenced by the Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835 - 1908). This is thought to be a cause of consternation to those Muslims who wish to herald Iqbal as a champion of twenteith century Muslim thinkers.

Iqbal had become a great admirer of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian following the conversion of Iqbal's father and elder brother Shaikh Ata Muhammad. Iqbal himself made his pledge in 1897 and even celebrated it in a poem on the subject.[1] He visited Qadian and had defended Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in other verses as well before and after this event. When Mirza Ghulam Ahmad visited Sialkot in 1904, Iqbal and his friend Sir Fazli Husain sought audience with him.[2]

It is a well known fact, for example, that it was Iqbal, who became instrumental in choosing Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmood Ahmad to lead the All India Kashmir Committee in 1931.[3] He also had a close relationship with Hadhrat Sir Chaudhry al-Hajj Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, who also a prominent Ahmadi.[4]

Muhammad Zafrullah Khan and Muhammad Iqbal in Whitehall, London.

In 1900, Iqbal published a paper in English on the famous Suﬁ saint Abdul Karim ibn Ibrahim al-Jilli. Mentioning the great scholarship of the saint, Iqbal wrote:

It will appear at once how strikingly the author has anticipated the chief phase of the Hegelian Dialectic and how greatly he has emphasised the doctrine of the Logos—a doctrine which has always found favour with almost all the profound thinkers of Islam, and in recent times has been readvocated by M. Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, probably the profoundest theologian among modern Indian Muslims.[5]

During the period of the Caliphate of Hadhrat al-Hajj Hafiz Hakeem Maulana Nooruddin, Iqbal was married to his granddaughter. The Caliph himself led the ceremony of Nikah in Qadian on 26 August 1910.[6] Iqbal would also correspond with the Caliph on many issues regarding Islamic jurisprudence, theology and Arabic literature. He even sent Mirza Jalaludin to Qadian to requested an Edict from the Caliph regarding the case of the divorce of his wife (who he had intended to divorce and was unsure of whether divorce had taken place from the point of Islamic Law) which he promptly acted upon:

The Maulana said that no divorce had taken place according to Islamic law, but if he was uncertain in his mind he could hold the marriage ceremony again. So a Maulvi was called, and the Allama was re-married to this lady. He then took her to Sialkot. This happened in the year
1913. [7]

Iqbal refered to the Community as "a true model of Islamic life" in a lecture he delivered at Aligarh[8] and sent his eldest son Aftab from his first marriage to Karim Bibi to Qadian to be educated in the Taleem-ul-Islam High School there.[9]

He actively continued engaging with both the Qadian and Lahore branches of the movement for the rest of his life.[10] Praising their work and influential publications. But eventually detracted to the Sufi order of the Qadiriyya on the grounds of doctrinal difference only during the last few years of his life.

[1] Makhzan, vol 2, p 48. See also AlHakm. (10 January 1903). 8, 9.
[2] Maulana Muhammad Ali. Sir Muhammad Iqbal's Statement re the Qadianis.
[3] Shahid, Maulana Dost Muhammad. Tahrikh eAhmadiyya v. [History of Ahmadiyya v]. 418.
[4] Perwazi, Professor Pervez. The Reminiscences of Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan. (Oriental Publishers, 2004). 15 - 19.

[5] Indian Antiquary, vol. 29. (September 1900). 239.
[6] Nooruddin, Hadhrat al-Hajj Maulana Hafiz Hakeem. Khutbat e Noor. (Nizarat Nashar o Ishaat, Qadian. 2003). 477.
[7] Salik, Abdul Majeed. Zikr e Iqbal. 70. See also Ahmad, Syed Hasanat. Hakeem Noor-ud-Deen - Khalifatul Masih I
- The Way of the Righteous. (Islam International Publications Ltd, 2003). 126, 127.
[8] Iqbal, Sir Muhammad. Millat Baiza Per Ayk Imranı Nazar. 84, 85.
[9] Al Fazl, 2 August 1935.

[10] See Muhammad, Hafiz Sher. Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal & the Ahmadiyya Movement. (Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat
Islam Lahore, 1995).

The Royal Wedding: William & Kate.

2011-04-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

'The Light of the World' & the Passion to Preach

2011-04-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Light of the World is an allegorical painting by William Holman Hunt (1827 - 1901). It represents the figure of Jesus Christ preparing to knock on an overgrown and long-unopened door, it is captioned with the quotation from the 'Book of Revelations' in The Holy Bible:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. [1]

Hunt said about it that "I painted the picture with what I thought, unworthy though I was, to be by Divine command, and not simply as a good subject."[2] Toward the end of his life, Hunt painted a life-size version, which was hung in St Paul's Cathedral, London, following a world tour as the 'Sermon in a Frame' where the picture drew large crowds. On a visit to the cathedral I saw a lady genuflecting before the painting and weeping with emotion.

There is a passage in the Discourses of Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad - The Holy founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community which always reminds me of this painting and leaves me wondering whether he may have seen it himself when the painting was shown in India. He says:

If it were in our power we would have gone door to door like beggars and preached the true creed of Almighty God. So that it may serve as a safeguarding of the people from this destructive idolatry and disbelief which has spread across the world. If Almighty God were to teach us the English language we would embark upon a tour in order to preach and end our life in this cause even though we may be killed for it. [3]

[1] The Holy Bible. Revelation 3: 20. Authorised King James version. (1611).
[2] Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism & the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood i. (London: Macmillan, 1905. 350).

[3] Ahmad, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam. 14 June 1902. Malfoozat ii [Discources ii]. 219.

The Agapemonites: New Media & Reply to an Allegation

2011-03-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

MTA Interview with Dr Nick Barratt regarding Pigott's house.

Dr Joshua Schwieso, research scholar and lecturer at the University of West of England, wrote his PhD thesis on the Agapemone (The Cult of Smyth-Pigott). Dr J Schwieso confirms that Smyth-Pigott had refrained from his claims of being God well before 1908. The founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (may peace be on him) had warned Smyth-Pigott to refrain from such a claim or he would be annihilated. This warning, and immense pressure from the Christian society kept Pigott from making such bold claims again. His cult no longer exists. Not a single person claims affiliation. He is interviewed at the Abode of Love in Spaxton, Somerset.

2 Interviews with Kate Barlow author of The Abode of Love: The Remarkable Tale of Growing Up in a Religious Cult can be heard here. More videos on the Agapemonites can be seen on my Youtube playlist.

Recently a video came to my notice in which it was stated that I had tried bringing the story of Pigott to the attention of members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after having accidentally stumbled upon it somewhere. This is incorrect. I have been reading the books of the Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (peace be upon him) since I was a child and I was aware of this prophecy for a long time. In the video it was mentioned that I had stated that I was strictly told not to pursue this story. This is totally false and baseless. I sought an audience with Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih V in 2005 and spoke at some length about Pigott, he encouraged me to pursue my interest in the history of the Agapemonite cult and write about it. I have also spoken with other members of the Community and nobody has ever discouraged me.

A Note on Shakespeare's King Lear

2011-01-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare’s plots and his language, particularly in King Lear do not work upon principles of common sense. It is obvious that Shakespeare suffered from the same bad case of tachycardia which troubles Lear:

Lear goes through the speech, as I say, like one actually being born, with a confused terror of the incarceration into flesh (in the grip of the weaver at the womb door), and broken glimpses of the female genitalia as the topography of Hell. But then, immediately after this darkest moment, and after some snatches of ‘we came crying hither’ and ‘the first time that we smell the air/We waul and cry’, and ‘When we are born we cry that we are come/To this great stage of fools’, he emerges, as on the opposite side of a Black Hole, into a new universe, punished, corrected, enlightened and transfigured, as a grey-haired babe, and the Goddess embraces him, correspondingly transformed, and wakens him with a kiss, as Coredelia.

(Ted Hughes. Shakespeare & the Goddess of Complete Being. Faber & Faber, 1992, revised & corrected, 1993. 263, 264).

When Ted Hughes was writing his chapter(s) about the eye in King Lear in Shakespeare & the Goddess of Complete Being (it is my favourite book on Shakespeare in which Hughes hits upon the skeleton-key to understanding Shakespeare) he came down with shingles and had to continue writing in bed, blind in his right eye. Shortly before his death he told the poet Andrew Motion that writing the book had shortened his life and showed him his hands, the lines of which had ruptured in blood as he wrote the book. In it, he touches upon reactivation of myths of the Egyptian sun god Re and his daughter, the Eye.

There is a passage in Geoffrey of Monmouth - One of Shakespeare's major sources for the play) in which, after relating him (Lear) to the god Janus (an altar to whom was reconstructed as Llyr’s tomb) - A prophecy is recorded from the mouth of Merlin that the ancient Drudic religion of the oak-cult will be swept away by Christianity and left to dwell forgotten in the Castle of Arianrod (the Corona Borealis).

Lear is England’s first Crow God (descended by archeological/religious/mythical evidence from Apollo, also a Crow God). Llyr also has canny associations with King Lud. At Ludgate, according to Islamic Tradition will take place the encounter between the Messiah and the antichrist.

There are stories in literature that exist upon the page and there are underlying, hidden, inner stories within them and inside the page (between the lines, so to say). If the reader can get to the heart of a book or the play within the play he has got to the truth.

And what of Cordelia’s mythic ancestry? In the Welsh myth from whence the story originates, she, Creddylad, is the third of the Triple Goddesses, she was banished out to sea as a heron for 300 years (her name is still the Welsh word for heron). Cordelia is the triple Tragic Equation itself and as such is silent. One of the meanings of her name is the heart of Lear, in French.

A Note on reading Joyce's 'Ulysses'.

2011-01-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

Picasso said 'The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? . . .I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them'. Joyce is reported to have said:

For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.
(Arthur Power. From an Old Waterford House).

Joyce's Ulysses is one of my all time favourite books. Although several editions have been pirated after the '22 text it still remains the most complete. A publication history detailing the editorial changes and why they were made is given in this edition. Thus Joyce:

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.
(Jacques Benoîst-Méchin in James Joyce. Richard Ellmann. Oxford University Press, 1959, revised 1982. 525).

I highly recommend that this be read (yes, there are a myriad books of commentary on Joyce's Ulysses, including the copious notes in this edition) with James Joyce's Odyssey: A Guide to the Dublin of "Ulysses" by Frank Delaney (author of such delights as The Celts chapter by chapter. He retraces Bloom's journey, making it timeless (as he does in Betjeman Country which incidentally I re-retraced in my own Litel Boke Seeking Betjeman Country). He wrote to his friend in Zurich "I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book." He also used to say that he never really finished it, thought the book did finish off his eyesight (like Homer, like Milton who went blind writing).

It is difficult to choose a single favourite section from the book but I would go for Molly Bloom's soliloquy wherein the book in invoked and evoked. And here you can see the only extant film of James Joyce.

Platforms: David Dimbleby, A Study of Art: W. H. Auden & King Lud.

2010-12-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

I find I can write more (generally not presently) as the week progresses and prefer to spell inquiry: Enquiry to maintain its French origin. I am one who has a great future behind me!

On 3 February David Dimbleby gave a highly entertaining talk about his new TV series 'Seven Ages of Britain' at the National Theatre. It was the first time I visited the National. He told various amusing anecdotes about the filming of the series and explained how his brother Nicholas (who is a sculptor) had to sculpt the head that is fished out of the Thames at the beginning of the series because the Museum of London would not allow him to use a bronze replica of the real head. He also showed how the Gilbert & Sullivan dance was done. Some questions taken from the audience and the hour was up very quickly. The event was chaired supremely by James Naughtie who I thought looked a lot like Richard Dimbleby. David Dimbleby is brilliant company, he speaks with such ease and really engages his audience.

On 27 February I attended 'A Study of Art: W. H. Auden' at the National Theatre This event was held in conjunction with the play by Alan Bennett based on the friendship between W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten. There were 4 speakers: Stan Smith (Professor of Literature), David Buckingham (Auden's colleague from Christ Church, Oxford), Andrew Motion (former Poet Laureate) and Anita Money (Auden’s niece).

Andrew spoke about Auden as the technical master of verse forms in the twentieth century (mentioning Hardy in this context), towering high above all as a global poet in the sense that no other poet had so much to say about other countries, saying - "You put your finger on the globe and there is something that Auden has to say about it." No other poet has the ability to do that so amazingly to "ingest the mood or character of a place." He compared him to Shelley in this regard (who he admitted was a strange name to induce in this case) - "Shelley also does have that extraordinary capacity to read a philosopher or a new batch of poems about this and that and turn out a poem about it almost immediately." He said it demanded a certain degree of genius to be able to do that. Anita pointed out that (he could be very irritating and very dogmatic) Shelley was the one poet Auden not only disapproved of but attacked most vehemently and consistently throughout his career. He didn't like the idea of poets being Unacknowledged Legislators (see ‘Psychology & Criticism’ in The Complete Works of W. H. Auden: Prose 1. Edited by Edward Mendelson, Faber & Faber, 1996. 131 – 133). He was dismayed when she told him she was going to do a thesis on Shelley while at Oxford.

Anita remembered that as a child she used to have a marvelous book of Grimm stories posted from America to where she lived in Calcutta - India which they would call the Wystan Book at home. They shared a flat in Calcutta with her mother's sister and her husband who worked on The Statesman. Anita had no conscious memory of Auden's visit to India in March 1951. He sent them a postcard later which she remembered. Later on she visited him and Chester in Italy, with her sister Rita (who passed away on 3 January 2008) and they found him to be such fun. He had a "Camp Wiggle." Auden and Chester introduced them to the delights of Coca Cola. Auden read to them from Tolkien's The Hobbit. Anita said she didn't picture Auden (at that stage of his life) as having had a need for happiness, he liked the family life, he liked the cosiness of family life, Thekla Clark’s family for instance, he talked of birds going to their nests - “What I remember very strongly about Wystan was he really made one think, I don’t know other words to describe that but I always found myself thinking a lot about things when I was with him.”

At this point James Naughtie (who was also chairing this event) asked David Buckingham (a chemical physicist and colleague of Auden from Oxford) to pop his jacket back on as he had left his mic attached to it, he didn't have much to share except one incident He had given Auden Auden the book A Child's Guide to Modern Physics. Auden as always interested in facts and believed that ideas in art ought not to remain mere poetic possibilities but ought to be based upon factual/actual experiences. About a year later he Auden if he had finished with the book and Auden asked to have it a little longer. He never did get his book back but said that one day soon after he found a handwritten poem in his pigeon-hole 'On Reading A Child's Guide to Modern Physics.' So the non-return of the book was well-recompensed.

On 15 March I set off to visit St Dunstan-in-the-West. The church was closed but I got to see the porch which boasts the statue of Queen Elizabeth I. The statue dates from 1586 and is the only surviving one made during her lifetime. It is the oldest outdoor statue in London and was taken from the front of the old Ludgate in 1760 and donated to be placed above the church porch 6 years later by Sir Francis Gosling who owned it when the gate was demolished in order to widen the street. The magnificent church clock from 1671was the first public clock in London to have a minute hand. The figures of 2 giants strike the hours and quarters turning their heads. Cowper referred to it in a poem. The church porch also houses the sixteenth century life-size, limestone statues of King Lud flanked by his 2 sons Androgeus and Theomantius. I perused about a few more churches and wandered around the Inns of Court thinking of Rumpole and the curious signs.

From 'The Light of Truth.'

2010-11-23T03:34:00.000-08:00

Just over a century ago it was British rule in India that allowed Indians to freely practice and preach their religions. Whereas it was not so under the earlier Sikh dominions and under Muslim rule the founder of Ahmadiyya may have been killed for claiming to be the Promised Messiah and the long-awaited Mahdi.

The recent protesters who burnt the poppy in Hyde Park are happy to receive British Citizenship and all the benefits and freedoms that come with it and yet they fail to show any respect or decency towards the people of this country. Such barbaric acts have nothing to do with any true religion. The poppy they burnt symbolised the remembrance of soldiers who lost their lives fighting for their countries. Islam teaches that one should show complete loyalty to one's country and be grateful to those who do good to you. On the other hand the Royal British Legion praised members of the Ahmadiyya Youth Organisation who raised thousands of pounds by taking part in the Poppy Appeal Fundraising.

It was Britain which provided the Ahmadis refuge when they were oppressed (and Muslim countries legislated to deprive them of their fundamental Human Rights) as it had served as a refuge for the followers of the earlier Messiah. For Ahmadi Muslims the prayers of the Promised Messiah عليه السلام are the spiritual forte behind the strength and survival of the British Monarchy. And it is about this country that the Promised Messiah عليه السلام prophesied:

So I can claim that I am peerless in rendering these services and I can state that I am alone in this support and I can say that I am a talisman and a refuge for this government which safeguards them from calamities and God granted me the tiding saying 'God is not such as to wipe out with chastisement those among whom you dwell.' So this government will soon come to know if it has an inkling of recognizing people that there is no other person who can equal me in exemplifying well-wishing of this government and in helping them.

(Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Noorul Haq [The Light of Truth]. Mustafai Press Lahore, 1894. Roohani Khazain viii. 45).

Reply to an Argument Regarding the Interpretation of 'Seal of the Prophets.'

2010-11-13T21:09:00.000-08:00

Muhammad is not the father of any of you men but he is the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets; and Allah has full knowledge of all things.

(The Holy Quran. Al Ahzab [The Coalition]. 41).

In his book With Love to the Ahmadis of the World, Farhan Khan has referred to a passage in the book Finality of Prophethood by Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad. In the chapter about the statements of Shaykh Muhiyudeen ibn al-'Arabi, Mr. Khan alleges that Ahmadi Muslims interpret an 'isolated quote' of the Great Shaykh to suit their own understanding of the term Seal of Prophets. First of all, it seems that either the references given (to ibn al-'Arabi) in this book have not been understood by Mr. Khan or he has deliberately chosen one small section of the quoted text so as to deceive his readers.

There is an Hadith [Tradition] of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ narrated in Sahih Bukhari that is mentioned by Shaykh ibn al-'Arabi in the course of this discussion in his magnum opus Futûhât al-Makkiya [The Meccan Revelations] that the Prophet of Allah said that 'When this Caesar will die, there will be no Caesar after him. When this Khusroe will die, there will be no Khusroe after him. By Him in Whose Hand is Muhammad's soul, surely you will spend their treasures in Allah's Cause.' Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih IV says:

That is to say, their glory, their pomp and show will be destroyed by the Muslims. In this Hadith, the Holy Prophet ﷺ in his unique wisdom has clearly explained the meaning of word la [no] by saying Fala Kaisera Ba’ada Hoo ['There will be no Caesar after him'] and Fala Kisra Ba’ada Hoo ['There will be no Khusroe after him'], there would be no Caesar after him (after this Caesar) and there would be no Khusroe after him (after this Khusroe). He [ibn 'Arabi in Futûhât al-Makkiya] makes it clear that La [no] used in this context does not signify the exclusion of an entire genus. Rather, it is used to emphasize that there would be no one who would attain their majesty and their magnificence.
Accordingly, we had Caesar succeeding a Caesar and a Khusroe succeeding a Khusroe for a thousand years after the Holy Prophet ﷺ but they never attained the glory and grandeur of the Caesar and Khusroe of the times of the Holy Prophet ﷺ.

Let us now look at the passages quoted by Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad in full and then let every sane person decide themselves whether the Ahmadiyya interpretations regarding the Finality of Prophethood in the writings of ibn al'Arabi stand up to scrutiny or that of Mr Khan:

We know this with certainty that in the Muslim Ummah there will be individuals whose status, according to Allah, will be of prophets but such prophethood will be without any new law or
Shariah.
              Prophethood will continue in mankind till the Day of Resurrection although prophethood bearing a new Shariah or law has come to an end. It must be realized, however, that bringing a new law is one of the many duties of prophethood.
         The prophethood which came to an end with the advent of the Holy Prophet ﷺ was Law-bearing Prophethood - a prophet with a new book and new law. There is no room for such prophethood after The Holy Quran. This is the correct meaning of the Tradition, which contains the Holy Prophet’s saying that there is to be no prophet after him. The Tradition only conveys that after the Holy Prophet, there can be no prophet who will replace his Sharia with another one. Henceforth, whenever any prophet comes, he will be subordinate to him and his Shariah.
                   When the Imam Mahdi makes his appearance, none other than the Orthodox Ulema and theologians would be his most ardent and open enemies.
(Futûhât al-Makkiya [The Meccan Revelations]. Chapter 73).

Commenting upon the Quranic verse:

And there is none among the People of the Book but will believe in it before his death; and on the Day of Resurrection he [Jesus] shall be a witness against them -
(The Holy Quran. Al Nisa [The Women]. 160).

Shaykh Muhiyudeen ibn al-'Arabi writes in the same book:

Jesus (peace be on him) shall descend amongst the Muslim Ummah as an arbritator without a new law. Most surely, he will be a prophet. There is no doubt about it. He is bound to descend in the Latter Days in a new physical form.

Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad points out:

Here you would note Hadhrat ibn-'Arabi states emphatically that the Messiah would be a new Messiah and that he will be a prophet. Despite all this evidence, our opponents would continue to insist that there will be no new prophet.

For further readings into Ahmadiyya understanding about the idea of the Finality of Prophethood see my work 'I am the Master of the Bezels: Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad on ibn 'Arabi.' (2010).

© Rehan Qayoom, 14 November 2010.

Fata Morgana.

2010-10-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

But the deeds of those who disbelieve are like a mirage in a desert. Which the thirsty person imagines to be water, when he comes up to it he finds it to be nothing and finds Allah near him Who pays him his account in full and Allah is swift in reckoning. [1]

David Dimbleby visits the town of Dunwich in A Picture of Britain and tells of the scientific phenomena of Fata Morgana.

For more information and instances of this spectacular occurrence see Marina Warner's 'Fata Morgana; or Castles in the Air' in Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century (Oxford University Press, 2006). Also the poem 'Lightenings: viii' by Seamus Heaney.

As in Dunwich, bells can also be heard rising from the sunken cathedral of Ys, subject of 'La Cathédrale engloutie' by the famous composer Debussy.

[1] The Holy Quran. Al Noor [The Light]. 40.

Maryam Hashemi - Exhibition at the Broadway Theatre, Barking.

2010-10-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to see an exhibition of paintings by the artist Maryam Hashemi at the Broadway Theatre in Barking. I first saw her recite some Ghazals with great passion and feeling, by the fourteenth Century Persian poet, Hafez at the event organised in his honour by Poet in the City on National Poetry Day. I have attended quite a few of their events in the past (I was at the Poetry Breakfast with Jo Shapcott that very morning) and this was one of their best.

Maryam Hashemi has a wonderful command of subject in her artwork, blending mythology with current every-day things that people of all ages can relate to in their own lives. I was particularly taken by the striking variety of colours. The strong projection of national heritage in her work is carefully constructed and sublimely universal and evokes an exceptional sense of the Genius Loci. Her paintings give a powerful message but they do so gently and with a remarkable clarity of vision. Do check out her website.

Prose 1997 - 2008. By Rehan Qayoom.

2010-10-18T16:19:00.000-07:00

2009 | Paperback: List Price: ~~£12.00~~ £10.80 You Save: 10%. PDF download:£6.62.
112 pp. | 15.2 × 22.9.

Reviews | Table of Contents
Introduction [pdf]

This volume of all of Rehan Qayoom's prose works from 1997 through 2008 providing a unique picture of this legendary writer's mind and art, including many little-known essays that exemplify his range, wit, depth, and wisdom. It incorporates the complete text of his first separately published prose book Seeking Betjeman Country including 28 separate essays, reviews, introductions, and lectures. 2 reviews that were commissioned, but which the magazines never printed, appear here for the first time. The variety of style and subject in this book is almost inexhaustible. He writes about the imaginary mirrors that everyone carries through life; Keats, Byron, English and Urdu poetry; and politics and religion.The introduction places the essays in biographical and historical context, and the extensive textual notes and bibliography explain obscure contemporary references. The text includes extensive corrections and revisions marked in personal copies of his work and which are printed here for the first time.

Reviews:

Extremely intelligent, very wise, I have no doubt that you qualify as an extremely intelligent, very wise and good and talented poet. Your excellent poetry in English and Urdu indicates that God has bestowed a very good understanding of subject to you. I am amazed at how you quote classic poets and use the right verses at the right times and imbue them with your rich and affluent sentiments. I have become an acceder of your poetry.
(Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad - Khalifatul Masih IV).

An obviously sincere poet.
(Andrew Motion).

It was like taking a walk in a dream and finding Betjeman at every corner. Say hello to Seeking Betjeman Country, he'll say hello back. A really enjoyable, informative work by a fan of Betjeman, and from a poet’s point of view. I've read it twice and will probably read it again soon.
(Claire Smith).

Energetic and interesting.
(Stand).

Tender, frank, considered and beautiful.
(Xstream East radio).

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements 8
Introduction 10
The Mercy of Allah 13
Knowledge 16
An exposition of interest 19
[My experience of Purda] 23
Divine Guidance 26
Poetry 27
The curse of Narcissus 30
The lady of camellias 31
‘Von herzen, möge es zu herzen gehen!’ 34
Hypocrisy 36
Fontanelle fons et origo 38
The unavoidable inevitable between rhyme & reason 43
Double Cheque 46
Dietrich at war 52
Neighbourliness 55
Hints from Sophie 56
Thesauruses 60
Omar Khayyam & the Rubaiyat 60
Women at War 61
The Passion of the Christ – View from a Muslim     68
Jesus – The only original element in Christianity 69
Passage d’Enfer 75
Omissions 76
Seeking Betjeman Country 83
A Review of Noor by Geoffrey Armes 95
A Review of Ten Feet High by Andrea Corr 96
The Sweetness of Poetry 97
Homage to Barking 99
A Cockney favourite 104
Bibliography 106

'Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match.' By Johann Zoffany. (1788).

2010-10-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

Zoffany accompanied Warren Hastings to Lucknow in 1784.

It was at such a cockfight that Mir's first meeting with Nawab Asafud Daulah took place. He wrote in his autobiography:

After 4 or 5 days, it so happened that the Nawab came to the mansion [of Salar Jang] to enjoy a round of cock fights. I was present there and paid my respects. He intuitively recognised me and said, 'You must be Mir Mohammad Taqi.' He then embraced me with utmost kindness, took me with him to where he was to sit and addressing me, recited some of his own verses. I said, 'Praise be to Allah. 'A king's verse is the king of verses.' ' Out of extreme kindness, he then pressed me to recite some verses too. That days I merely recited some couplets of a Ghazal. At the time of the Nawab's departure, Salar Jang said to him, 'Now that Mir has come here at your excellency's command you are his master. You may assign him a position and send for him to keep you company whenever you wish.' The Nawab replied, 'I shall fix a salary and let you know.' After a couple of days, he sent for me. I went and presented myself and read the panegyric I had written in his praise. He listened to it and, with utmost graciousness, accepted me into his service. And he showers on me such kindness and consideration.

(Zikr e Mir. Mir Mohammad Taqi Mir. 1773. Translated by C. M. Naim. Oxford University Press, 1999. 118, 119).

The Hemlock Cup. By Bettany Hughes. (Random House, 2010).

2010-10-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad – Khalifatul Masih IV argues in his magnum opus Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth that Socrates was a prophet of the ancient Greeks. The apparent prophetic qualities of Socrates are even today, a subject for academic debate. His constant reference to the oracle and how it performs the active function of a moral compass by preventing him from unseemly acts could easily be taken as a reference to - or substitute for revelation. Similarly, Socrates often refers to God in the singular as opposed to the plural and actively rejected the Greek pantheon of Gods and Goddesses unless citing them as examples of their falseness.

From 'In the Mood for Love.' (2000).

2010-10-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

It is a restless moment.
She has kept her head lowered,
to give him a chance to come closer.
But he could not, for lack of courage.
She turns and walks away.

That era has passed.
Nothing that belonged to it exists any more.

He remembers those vanished years.
As though looking through a dusty window pane,
the past is something he could see, but not touch.
And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

'To H' & 'On 'Speck of Blue.'

2010-09-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

To H.

Years of research and a line of verse

The paper detritus is left behind

My pipe is full of butt-ends from the grate

Fit them all in anywhere

How much do you want of me? How much can you take?

What do I have to do to win your emotions, or am I beyond redemption?

[יד] הוא היה אומר, אם אין אני לי, מי לי; וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני; ואם לא עכשיו, אימתיי. *

This city fell a long time ago

Taken (not by impercipiently asking octogenarians)

By Blairian barbarians

Search now in vain for her lime-green bowers

Try to convince yourself they do not know

Try not to cough in case it notices

This city is too big for you

Its current crop is rotten to the core

Its streets are being cleared of the remains

So then why this constant need for companionship?

I cannot say

But if you had stuck out your thumb, yes

You would have stopped any of the 3 trains to Paris that have just passed you by

Hold my hand
For I do not know whether to bask in the delight of these magic circles you form so much

Or the inclement weatherful trees or you
"Where are we going?"

And yes, that also explains the twitch

He wants you to hold his hands too

My élan vital, timeless, true

Precambrian remembrancer, alphabetic osmosis

Come gentle sleep to wile my woes away

Severely swaying, saying

"Where are you staying?"

"I'm coming over" and the rest of it

I do not seek my image in the mist of eternal burning

* 'If not me, who? If not now, when?' Rabbi Hillel. Pirkei Avot 1.

On 'Speck of Blue.'

'Speck of Blue'

So beautifully true

The evidence is you

Her jewels

(Were read)

Red and blue

We do not fear

The tap root, dear

We have been there

<a href="http://jeanmontag.bandcamp.com/track/speck-of-blue">Speck of Blue by Hollace M Metzger & Jean Montag</a>

A Message from Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih V to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

2010-08-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

I have rendered into English the message written by His Holiness Khalifatul Masih V on the occasion of the 2010 edition of the books of Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad - The Holy Founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. The message can be read here.

An Introduction to these Hidden Treasures of Islam, compiled by Syed Hasanat Ahmad, can be found here.

Maharaja: the Splendour of India's Royal Courts, Sentinel Literature Festival 2009, Pie & Mash & Poetry Live for Haiti

2010-08-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

It is not wisdom for a young man that can scantly keep himself to take a wife; therefore I hold it the best way to lead a single life, for I have heard say that many sorrows follow marriage, especially where want remains, and beside it is a hard matter to find a constant woman, for as young maid are fickle. So are old women jealous. [1]

George Orwell wrote that 'The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually.' [2] John Taylor the Water Poet wrote:

Some through ignorance and some through spite
Have said that I can neither read nor write

The only thing relevant to Christmas I did last year was to watch The Snowman on TV like a ritual. My thoughts straying elsewhere during it. I do not enter this decade with any dreams or ambitious illusions. I have long forgot what it is to desire something. If time has not wiped me out by the end of what is just another Low Dishonest decade in which I will still read books, watch films, attend poetry sessions occasionally. People will still say the same things about me, it will still be raining. Nothing ever happens here - As Alan Bennett said 'Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.' At least, I know that mine is. And that which happens to other people. And there is the Larkin line 'Something like nothing, happens anywhere.' Today I am back where I was in 2000, snobbish, selfish, whatever else I am labelled, none the richer and none the wiser. I tend to the neorealist view of history being cyclical. A continual movement, as Antoine Lavoisier said 'Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme.'

The same theory applies to places. Peter Ackroyd and (probably from him) many others have noted the persistence of particular professions localised to particular areas - Hence the Muse would drink at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon in the late '80s early '90s and work in an office next to that of The Guardian newspaper.

On 2 December I visited the Victoria & Albert Museum to see the recently installed exhibtion on the history of the Maharajas of India. Their riches, splendour, wealth, their relations with the British and their lifestyles following partition. I really enjoyed it. An incredible era credited most fittingly. It included paintings and artefacts belonging to the royal collections of Udaipur and Jodhpur including the Patiala necklace - The largest single commission ever executed by Cartier. The necklace originally contained 2930 diamonds, weighing almost 1000 carats. The photographic collection was also spectacular. This included priceless footage from the Delhi Durbar of 1911 when King George V visited India with Queen Mary - The film is of the western-educated Maharajha Sayajirao Gaekwad II of Baroda walking with his back to the king after presenting himself before him. He had, initially, caused much consternation by not donning his full regalia.

Afterwards I made my way to the Sentinel Literature Festival 2009. Sentinel had published my poem 'Pygmalion' a few years ago.

On 14 I attended a talk on Venice by Peter Ackroyd at the V & A. He recently made a TV documentary to go with his new book VENICE - Pure City. I spoke to him afterwards. All a bit awkward as all someone like myself can say to someone like him is to splutter out a jet of cliches of praise and admiration. His books, I said were the books on the subject, voluminous and readable. I asked if he constantly wrote and he said "That is what I do" and patted my shoulder in gratitude. I dined afterwards at the restaurant, one of my favourite places. I have dreamt about this place.

I also attended the Pie & Mash Club meet on 18. Nick wrote in his review of the meeting 'We were honoured with the presence of Piet Laureate Rehan Qayoom, whose pastry prose since gaining the post has been insubstantial - one might say flaky. After lunch we saw him head off to browse the 'book shops' of the West End, in search of his muse like a true Desparate Romantic.'

On 30 January I made my way past the Old Bailey - I have been watching the complete run of John Mortimer's TV masterpiece Rumpole of the Bailey - To Westminster County Hall for Poetry live for haiti - To raise money for sufferers of the recent earthquake there. To my surprise it turned out to be the biggest poetry event I have attended outside of the Moshaira at Jalsa Salana 1995 (with Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, Saqib Zirvi, Bashir Ahmad Orchard, Abdul Mannan Nahid). I met Saqib Zirvi afterwards and praised his poetry and in reply he praised my ears! Around 800 people came to a packed County Hall: Carol Ann Duffy who I last saw read at the PEN International Writers Conference around 2001, introduced Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah Brown. Gordon Brown spoke for a while. Carol An Duffy, in her introduction referred to Auden's line in which he says 'Poetry makes nothing happen.' She also quoted from Blake's 'On Another's Sorrow.' Robert Minhinnick recited a wonderful poem in the meter of Auden's 'As I Walked Out One Evening' called 'The Yellow Palm' and beginning 'As I made my way down Palestine Street.'

Andrew Motion recited a number of poems from his latest collection The Cinder Path including 'The Dipper.' Maura Dooley and Owen Shears who are both good poets also recited their poetry. I queued up to meet him later but he was speaking to too many other people and signing copies of his books. I met Andrew Motion later. Patting my shoulder he asked how I was.

Jo Shapcott recited 'St Bride's' and said she was "Somewhat Unravelled" by the audience. She also recited 'Piss Flower' repeating the same intro to it she spoke at her reading at Somerset House a few years ago. Elaine Feinstein (author of Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet). The event lasted the whole day with a short break in between after which I went down to sit in front of the stage instead of up in the gallery where I was sitting in the morning. There were so many people there I wondered about my doe-eyed muse, who I shall probably see no more, if she was there. At the end Carol Ann Duffy came on to end the event and said "Do you all need a large drink?" She said her mother died 5 years ago next week and recited 'Premonitions' a poem she wrote in memory of the poet U. A. Fanthorpe. I came out elated into the crisp cold night and walked to Trafalgar Square.

[1] Deloney, Thomas. The Pleasant Historie of John Winchcombe, In his younger yeares called Jack of Newberry. (1597).
[2] Orwell, George. Down & Out in Paris & London. (Victor Gollancz, 1933).

© Rehan Qayoom, 2010. Photo Credits: Nnọrọm Azụonye & Nick Evans.

The Treatise on Being. By Shaykh Muhiyudeen ibn al'Arabi.

2010-07-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

A commentary on the Prophetic Tradition 'Whoso knoweth himself knoweth his Lord' which has also been rendered 'He who knows the truth about himself surely knows God.' It is a statement of the fact of the essential unity of all existence, addressed to the most intimate consciousness.

The Andalusian author Shaykh Muhiyudeen ibn al'Arabi (1165 - 1240) is one of the greatest of Islamic saints and mystics. He says: 'This discourse is with God, not with other than God, and not with the blind. For he who attains this station knows that he is not other than God. And our discourse is with him who has resolution and energy in seeking to know himself in order to know God, and keeps fresh in his heart the image of his seeking and longing for union with God; and not with him who has neither aim nor end.' This short treatise can be read here. An audio mp3 file of the book can be downloaded here.

'An Eastern power & Korea's delicate situation'

2010-07-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

On 29 April 1904, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad received the Word from God 'Korea is in a dangerous situation. Eastern power.' The footnote to the annotated edition of the collection of his revelations records a slightly different word-order:

When the war started between Japan and Russia, and Japan had not yet achieved any significant victory, the Promised Messiah received this revelation: 'An Eastern power and Korea's delicate situation.' Many members of our Jamaat [Community], especially those who live in Qadian, know about this revelation. I regret that I failed to publish this earlier. I am recording it now because I feel that this new Eastern power has a special relevance to the Ahmadiyyah Jama‘at. (Allah knows best.)
Note by Maulana Abdul Latif Bahawalpuri: Before the war between Russia and Japan, Korea was under the control of the Russia. This war was concluded with a peace treaty on May 27–28, 1905. The first clause in the treaty was that Japan will have complete sovereignty over Korea. Thus with the victory of the Eastern power (Japan) and the defeat of Korea, this prophecy of the Promised Messiah was clearly fulfilled. It should be noted that the prophecies have multiple fulfillments. Now that the East is gaining greater prominence on the international scene, it seems that the future events will unfold a new commentary of this revelation, [As Allah the Almighty so wills]. [1]

The second Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community writes about this as one of the prophetic miracles of a political nature shown to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (the founder of the Community) and states that he received this revelation as the The Russo–Japanese War began:

As is evident from the words of this revelation it was vouchsafed therein that Japan would be the victor in this war and that it would receive such a glorious victory that it will be able to fulfill its wish of capturing Korea. But the Koreans will not like this and a dangerous chaos and insurrection will take place which will destroy the country. Although at the time this revelation was published even the greatest of political statesmen and those in government could not have uttered such a thing and some people were not even willing to accept that Japan will emerge victorious let alone entertain such a hope and thought that Russia is still ignorant of the impact this war. They thought that in time it will use its endless resources to crush Japan and nobody would have imagined that if Japan won they will have to fulfill its demands but see how the events of the future unfolded to prove the truth of this Word? Japan won and Russia fell victim to such diabolical rioting that it had to make peace and succumb to Japan's demands and accept its power over Korea but the Korean hated this greatly and seeing Japan's insistence it raised the flag of revolt against it and this country remained in a state of danger for many many years thereafter and the way the peace there has been disturbed cries at the top of its voice in approval of its delicate state that was revealed to His Holiness the Promised Messiah. [2]

Another essay he wrote in December 1951 on the subject of Communism & Democracy is also worth reading in this context.

The fifth Caliph mentioned this prophecy in his Friday Sermon of 9 May 2003 and said that the situation in Korea is unstable to date.

[1] Ahmad, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam. Tadhkirah. Second English Edition. ( Islam International Publications Ltd, 2009). 667, 668.

[2] Ahmad, Hadhrat al-Hajj Mirza Bashirudeen Mahmood - Khalifatul Masih II. Tohfa Shehzada Wales [Gift to the Prince of Wales]. 1922. In Anwarul Uloom

vi. (Fadl-I-‘Umar Foundation). 520, 521.

Dark Mysteries of the Green Man.

2010-07-23T12:02:00.001-07:00

I also observe that in Saints of Allah as is the Sunnah of Allah there should be apparently something. Just as a mother dresses up her baby with beautiful good clothing and sends it outside she also taints the baby’s face with a charcoal powder patch so as to guard it from the evil eye. Likewise God also mixes up something in the lives of his pious servants whereby people of evil nature keep off from him and only virtuous people gather around him. A good person sees the real beauty of his personality and the vicious one concentrates on the black spot.

Once in Amritsar. Some clerics were present at a feast and the host had also invited me to the house. Tea was bought. I received the saucer with my left hand. Everybody accused me of acting against the Sunnah. I said: it is Sunnah to receive a cup in the right hand but is it not Sunnah that 'Do not follow what you do not know.' * That one should not let one's tongue serve the cause about which one has not the knowledge. Was it not befitting for you people to think well of me and to remain silent. Or if you could not manage this to have asked me before attacking me as to the reason for my conduct? Then I would have told you that the actual reason is that the bone on my right elbow was broken in childhood and I cannot raise my hand whilst holding the cup and saucer. When I revealed this to them they were embarrassed.

* Do not follow what thou dost not know. For the ear and eye and heart shall all be called to account.

The Holy Quran. Bani Israel [Children of Israel]. 37.

(Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. 28 October 1905. Delhi - India. Malfoozat [Discourses] iv. 525, 526).

To Hannah Shah, author of 'The Imam's Daughter'.

2010-07-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Hannah.

It has come to my attention that you have repeated a number of misconceptions regarding Islam in your book.

You must know that the Quran says very clearly La iqraha fiddin 'There is no compulsion in matters of faith' that is: everybody should be free to believe what they want:

There is no compulsion in religion. Surely guidance and error have been clearly distinguished; so whoever refuses to be led by those who transgress and believes in Allah has surely grasped a strong handle which knows no breaking. And Allah is All-Hearing and All-Knowing.
(The Holy Quran. Al Baqarah [The Cow]. 257).

Then it states:

And say 'It is the truth from your Lord; wherefore let him who will believe and let him who will disbelieve.' Verily We have prepared for the wrongdoers a fire already covering them like a canopy. And if they cry for relief it will be with water like molten lead which will scald their faces. How dreadful the drink and how evil the resting place!
(The Holy Quran. Al Kahf [The Cave]. 30).

Yet another verse runs thus:

Those who believe, then disbelieve, then again believe, then disbelieve and become increasingly defiant, Allah will never forgive them nor guide them to any way of deliverance.
(The Holy Quran. Al Nisa [The Women]. 138).

If according to your understanding an apostate were put to death then there arises no question of having the opportunity to join Islam again. This verse mentions apostates who again accept Islam as the group of Munafiqin [Hypocrites] did at the time of the Prophet so as to intentionally make a mockery of faith.

Moreover The Holy Quran states: 'Verily, this is a Reminder; so whoever wishes may take the way that leads to his Lord.' [Al Dahr {The Time}. 30].

Please see the following links for further information and clarification:

'Blasphemy & Apostasy.'
Punishment of Apostacy in Islam. By Hadhrat Sir Chaudhry Muhammad Zafrullah Khan.
'Freedom of Conscience in Islam.' By Imam Bashir Ahmad Rafiq.
The Truth about The Alleged Punishment for Apostasy in Islam. By Mirza Tahir Ahmad.

Several of the chapters in Murder in the Name of Allah by Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad - Khalifatul Masih IV also deal with this issue from an historical perspective. In short The Holy Quran takes up the issue of apostasy 11 times and nowhere does it prescribe that an apostate should be killed.

The verse that you refer to in the book about beating of wives is wrongly translated. This is the verse:

Men are guardians over women because Allah has made some of them excel others and because the men spend of their wealth. So virtuous women are obedient and safeguard the secrets with Allah's help. And admonish those of them on whose part you apprehend negligence. And leave them alone in their beds so as to chastise them. Then if they obey you seek no pretext against them. Surely Allah is the High the Great.

(The Holy Quran. Al Nisa [The Women]. 35).

Your website states that you have a degree in Theology and Religious Studies so I find it hard to believe however much I want to that you have innocently and unknowingly repeated these false allegations against Islam. I can only pray that Allah may remove the hatred of Islam you have in your heart because having studied religion you carry on attributing false things to the Quran.

Yours Sincerely.

Rehan Qayoom.

Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius: Official Response to the Government Sanctioned Genocide of Ahmadi Muslims in Lahore, Pakistan.

2010-06-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad - Khalifatul Masih IV wrote in his book Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues 'Swords can win territories, but not hearts. Force can bend heads, but not minds.'

Almost a hundred martyrs were laid to rest in the dust of Rabwah - Pakistan this month in an atmospehere of suffocating grief. All killed most brutally in cold blood for their beliefs whilst worshipping at their mosque. Initially the Pakistani media at large were barred by their constitution from using the correct Islamic terminology (such as Mosque, Friday, Funeral, Imam, Prayer, Martyr and Muslim) to describe the events, because the Ahmadis were delcared non-Muslims in 1974 and are forbidden to use Islamic terms or even to 'pose as Muslims'. Within hours TV stations and newspapers were demanding an immediate repeal/annulment of the inhumane Second Ammendment and Ordinance XX which revokes the Ahmadiyya Muslim's right to citizenship and the right to worship due solely to their religious beliefs. It is one of the ironies of history, since Ahmadi Muslims were foremost in supporting Jinnah in the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Ahmadi Muslims helped in the creation of Pakistan and defending it, yet they have been persecuted openly with laws for the last 35 years, their basic human rights taken away. The whole generation of Pakistanis have been born into lies and deceit of Clergy and the government has done nothing to stop this vile and baseless propaganda against the Community.

Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad - Khalifatul Masih V, head of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, issued the following statement.

One of those martyred was a British businessman from the Ahmadiyya Community who was in Lahore on a business trip. The BBC showed the following report.

Rafiq Ahmad Hayat, President of the central Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, UK, spoke on CNN and London Tonight and wrote a powerful article in The Independant newspaper titled 'This is a sign of things to come'. BBC News and News at Ten also reported the incident in several of their programs.

The Following day news emerged of another terrorist having attacked an Ahmadi Muslim and his son. The terrorist was caught and confessed that he had been incited to murder the Ahmadi Muslim during a Friday Sermon in which the cleric had stated that anyone who killed an Ahmadi would be welcomed into Paradise by the Prophet Mohammad ﷺ and receive a reward of 70 virgins! Another Press Release was issued by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community with details of the incident.

Prominent Pakistani journalists such as Raza Rumi and Mubashar Luqman and spokespersons of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community appeared on TV channels and spoke in condemnation of the events. Ahmadis were allowed to appear on Pakistani TV channels for the first time since 1974 to quell doubts and misconceptions regarding their beliefs. Below are some of these videos including some posted to Youtube by Ahmadi Muslims from around the world.

1. Attacks result of "Pampered Extremists." Interview with Mujibur Rahman. (CNN).

2. Al Jazeera TV Report with Fareed Ahmad.

3. NBC News Report. (With American Ahmadi Law Student).

4. Response to Ahmadiyya Muslim Attacks in Lahore. (Youtube Video).

5. Lahore Terrorist Attack: young Ahmadi Muslims React! (Youtube Video).

6. The day terrorists killed my family but not my faith. (The Times, 1 June 2010).

Sahibzada Mirza Khurshid Ahmad (Chief Executive Director of the Community in Pakistan & Local President of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Rabwah), issued the following statement to the press.

This was followed up with another resounding Press Conference with Sahibzada Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (Vizier of Adminstrative Finance, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Rabwah) who spoke up very bravely about the real reasons as to how and why an atrocity on this scale took place.

On 29 May the hospital where over a hundred survivors of the blasts were being treated was stormed by armed terrorists. The motive seems to have been to retrieve one of their men who was had survived and was being treated at the hospital. The terrorists escaped and were not caught by the police at the time. The Telegraph this report.

On 4 June 2 suspected terrorists armed with AK- 47s 3 magazines and 500 rounds of ammunition and home made grenades were captured by Ahmadis in Rabwah and handed over to the police. Some improvised bomb-like items were also recovered and the Bomb Disposal Squad Team was summoned from Faisalabad. Extremist Mullahs of Pakistan freely continue issuing daily Fatwas [Edicts] for the killing of innocent Ahmadi Muslims and posters are pasted all over Pakistan in promiting this and no action has been taken by the law against this incitement of hatred.

The Cauldron of Cerridwen.

2010-04-05T07:54:00.001-07:00

Afagddu's ugliness is prerogative to his success and high intelligence (to recompense for his ugliness). He achieves this by quaffing a cauldron of the Triple Muse that has simmered for a year and a day from below by mephitic jets of chewed toadstools and warmed from above from the breaths of the 9 Muses (season by season with a brew of the sacred magical herbs ivy, hellebore and laurel, in accordance with the planetary motions). The cauldron itself contained a mash of barley, acorns, honey and bull's blood.

Afagddu eventually grows up to be swineherd royale to King Guaire of Connaught. His rival is Gwion who accidentally tasted the elixir when a drop bubbled onto his finger and Cerridwen tries to destroy him, adopting many guises - But thereon hangs another tale. In his poem 'Kadweir Taliesin' he mentions the cauldron 'of the 5 Trees.' Taliesin himself was a Second Coming of Gwion.

Cerridwen is also the White Goddess of Life-in-Death and Death-in-Life. The Welsh bards described her as a Grain Goddess. Robert Graves in The White Goddess explicates upon the etimology of her name (and speculates that Arianrhod is another one of her many aspects). Graves points out Cerridwen's close connection with the witch Sycorax in Shakespeare's The Tempest in the chapter 'Herclues on the Lotus.'

J. A. MacCullock in The Religion of the Ancient Celts equates her with the Sow Demeter (who is succeeded by Rhiannon). She had a cast in her left eye that has been recorded in the Romance of Taliesin.

Sir James George Frazer records her existence in parts of Germany and France as a spirit-of-the-corn Cat Goddess.

In Christianity from as early as the thirteenth century the Virgin Mary herself becomes the cauldron or source of inspiration. Long before this she had already been reinvented by the Saxons, Angles and the Danes who brought very similar versions of her over to England with them.

The Agapemonites: Hazrat Khalifatul Masih V & Sir John Betjeman on John Hugh Smyth-Pigott

2010-03-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

Even here in this country he Challenged the Reverend Pigott and who was made a sign. The same people who calling him God had prostrated before him, who had presumed to make an Ark of Noah to save the world in an advertisement. When His Holiness the Promised Messiah (peace and blessings be upon him) found out he said 'Now our true Ark of Noah will dominate the false Ark of Noah' [Malfoozat ii, 512]. His Holiness the Promised Messiah (peace and blessings be upon him) wrote an advertisement in refutation of his claim and had it printed in the newspapers in England. One newspaper in London, Sunday Circle also printed this advertisement on 14 February 1903 and before the publication of this advertisement this paper also appended the headline 'The Hindustani Antagonist of Rev. Pigott the Final Messiah.' Anyhow His Holiness the Promised Messiah (peace and blessings be upon him) had announced his destruction and annihilation, the very Pigott who was at his zenith in those days proved unable to withstand the opposition from the Christians and went around hiding in places. And the world witnessed that the true Ark of His Holiness the Promised Messiah (peace and blessings be upon him) came to prevail.

(Concluding Address to Jalsa Salana 2008. 27 July 2008. Alton, Hampshire - United Kingdom).

From Metro-land. (BBC, 1973).

The Agapemonites: 2 Interviews with Kate Barlow.

2010-01-31T10:25:00.000-08:00

The reverend John Hugh Smyth-Pigott claimed to be the Christ in 1902. He was challenged by Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who predicted his doom in the same year and the fact that his own name and fame would spread across London when that of Pigott would have long vanished and that his own Ark of Noah would overtake that of Pigott's, in allusion to the title of the pamphlet that was received in Qadian from Piggot (Malfoozat ii, 512).

I have visited his house in London and the Ark of the Covenant – A study of the recent book The Abode of Love written by his granddaughter will prove how gloriously this prophecy of the holy founder of the Ahmadiyya was fulfilled. The Ark of the true Messiah has been established in Piggot’s own city since 1984. Below is a film about Pigott's house and 2 interviews with his granddaughter and author of The Abode of Love, Kate Barlow.

1. Woman's Hour: Growing Up Within a Religious Cult. (BBC Radio 4, 4 April 2006).

2. The Spirit of Things. (ABC Radio, 3 January 2010).

Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad on Sir Philip Sidney

2010-01-28T19:15:00.001-08:00

Thus when, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Philip Sidney was injured during the siege of the fort of Zutphen in Holland, and he was in the death throes and extremely thirsty, a cup of water was brought to him which was very scarce there. Near to him was another injured soldier who was thirsty. He started looking at Sidney with much envy. Seeing his desire, Sidney did not drink the cup himself but, by way of sacrifice, gave it to that soldier, saying “Your need is greater than mine”.

It is quite clear that Sidney considered the soldier to be more valuable than himself for 2 reasons. Firstly, that Sidney was about to die and the soldier could have been more useful while alive. Secondly, that the soldier was a brave fighter. That is why Sidney said: “Your need is greater”.

This is an example of bravery and the quality of sacrifice shown by Sidney, the conclusion from which is that a greater man laid down his life for a lesser one.

(Kitabul Bariyya [The Book of Acquittal]. Ziyaul Islam Press, 1898).

Khwaja Kamaluddeen narrated to me and I have myself read this story that when Sir Philip Sidney was injured during the siege of the fort of Zutphen in Holland during the reign of Queen Elizabeth,and he was in the death throes and extremely thirsty, a cup of water was brought to him which was very scarce there. Near to him was another injured soldier who was thirsty. He started looking at Sidney with much envy. Seeing his desire, Sidney did not drink the cup himself but, by way of sacrifice, gave it to that soldier, saying “Your need is greater than mine”. Just as some people do not desist from affectation even at the time of death. Similarly even charlatans can usually do such works from foppery, who wish to display a pretence of their grand morals.

(31 January 1898. Malfoozat, i. 138).

John Barleycorn by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. (November 2009).

2010-01-15T22:16:00.001-08:00

The Path of Memory: Michael Jackson, Aeronwy Thomas, Leela Naidu, Rajmata Gayatri Devi

2009-11-20T10:50:00.001-08:00

Michael Jackson died on 25 June after suffering a cardiac arrest in California – America. He was known as the ‘King of Pop’ being one of the most successful artists ever. After his death many websites experienced a crash and shutdown due to huge amounts of people browsing them in search of the latest news including myself. His funeral service was held at the Staples Centre in California on 7 July in which his family and friends paid tribute to his genius.

Later on coroners decided after thorough investigation lasting weeks to conclude his death to have been resulting from homicide, Jackson had been administered various lethal drugs before his death. He was interred on 3 September at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California following another memorial service.

Aeronwy Thomas (Dylan Thomas’ daughter) passed away on 27 July from cancer. She was born on 3 March 1943 in London and was named after the river Aeron in Wales. She received her BA Hons in England and Comparative Religion. She was elected as Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales in 2003. She was a translator of Italian poetry, President of the Dylan Thomas Society and the Alliance of Literary Societies. She married Trefor Ellis and bore him a son and daughter (Huw and Hannah). The funeral was held on 6 August in the Parish Church of Holy Cross in New Malden, Surrey. Her son Huw read his own poem ‘Words about My Mum.’ She was creamted and her ashes were then scattered at the Boathouse in Laugharne. Aeronwy Thomas was a devoted and accomplished poet herself.

Leela Naidu passed away on 28 July in Mumbai after a prolonged bout of influenza. She was born in 1940. She was Miss India in 1954 and featured in Vogue’s ‘World’s Ten most Beautiful Women.’ She was the daughter of the Nuclear Physicist Dr Ramaiah Naidu (Scientific Advisor to UNESCO for South East Asia) and Dr Marthe naidu – An Indianologist of Swiss-French origin. She married Tilak Raj Oberoi in 1956, scion of the Oberoi Hotel Chains, he was then 33. She bore him twin daughters: Maya and Priya (Priya passed away last year). This marriage ended in divorce. She then married the poet Dom Moraes in 1969 with whom she spent 25 years living in Hong Kong, New York, Dilli and Mumbai (he passed away on 2 June 2004). They separated in the mid nineties. I first saw her in the captivating role she played in The Householder (1963) with Shashi Kapoor, directed by Merchant Ivory Productions. Her other films are Anuradha (1960), Umeed (1962), Man of the World: The Frontier (1962), Ye Raste Hain Pyar Ke (1963), Baghi (1964), Channing: The Face in the Sun (1964), The Guru (1969), Trikaal (1985) and Electric Moon (1992). She is survived by Maya and her 2 grandsons Adam and Alexander.

She had a few spoons of porridge and then went to sleep and died in her sleep. Her funeral was held on 29 in Chandanwadi and was attended by her daughter, grandchildren and friends.

Rajmata Gayatri Devi of Jaipur passed away on 29 July. She was born on 23 May 1919 to Prince Jitendra Narayan Bhoop Bahadur of Cooch Bihar and Princess Indira Raje Scindla of Baroda. The death of her paternal uncle, the Crown prince, led to her father ascending the throne. She was well educated and married His Highness Sarmad – e – Raja – e – Hindustan Raj Rajendra Sri Maharajadhiraja Sir Sawai Man Singh II Bahadur on 9 May 1940. She was his third wife. She bore him one son: Prince Jagat Singh of jaipur on 15 October 1949.

She was an particularly avid equestrienne. She was included in Vogue’s ‘World’s Ten most Beautiful Women’ list along with Leela Naidu who passed away a day before her. She started a girl’s school across India and revived the art of Jaipur blue pottery. In 1962 she ran for parliament and won the constituency in the Lok Sabha in the largest landslide victory confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records. She continued to hold this seat in 1967 and 1971 against the Congress Party – India’s Privy Purses were abolished in 1971 and Gayatri Devi was accused of violating tax laws and incarcerated for 5 months in Thar Jail. She wrote about this time in Memoirs of a Hindu Princess. She has had many books written on her and featured recently in Lucy Moore’s superb book Maharanis as well as the documentary film produced by Merchant Ivory, Autobiography of a Princess.

She was hospitalised in the King Edward’s Hospital on 17 July and then flown to Jaipur where she passed away. Hailed as the last surviving remnant of India’s royal past she was cremated on the evening of 30 July in Jaipur.

Rehan Qayoom

Game Royale.

Ted Hughes Commemoration in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Reviews By Christina Westover.

8 New Poems.

A Bibliography.

'I Am the Master of the Bezels' - Ahmadiyya on ibn 'Arabi.

The Golden Age of Islam.

In Memoriam: Morney Wilson.

Complete List of the Works of Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835 - 1908).

Thoughts on ‘Eternal Story' by Hollace M. Metzger.

If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,

Are constantly homesick for, this is chiefly

Because it dissolves in water. [1]

Can one but help be immersed in Metzger's work, it keeps me dazzled at nights. I read everything cyclically. In dreams of showing an essay I've written of just over a page in red ink. Of mention of my photo-phobia and her asking a class of students to draw the curtains:

I know what you do

when he makes love to you,

how he doesn’t like

when you wear your hair up,

But, you shouldn’t worry

because he will never turn away,

leave you or lean my way.

We may touch, but only kiss

in our fantasies while we

share a coffee in silence.

Never, in

his wildest dreams,

would he think

of committing himself to me.

It’s too easy.

('To the Jealous Girlfriend'). [2]

For me those moments spent in such regal company are of strange and secret whisperings:

The sounds that we make depend on where the breath stops on its passage from the lungs to the lips. [3]

Re 'Stalkings' there is no girl (let me tell you) down my street but that doesn't mean I do not dream though they do not do but:

Some other path will branch out from that point on

And hand in hand we will begin the journey

In the shadows of your tresses to the movement of your arms

And to say this is to be cyclical as all things are. That is the essential lesson of life, of flux within its continuum. [6] I can hear the most sublime music and a beautiful love poem in 'Violin Heart' - "Tomorrow will be okay."

I have some comments on 'Fame' on a love that dares not name me now that had promised to remember me but now rejects, jilts, reviles even as fame accompanies that one (now passed around like a wineglass) from place to place, person to person, heart to heart:

Forgotten

in their present state,

my possessions

have been diminished

to people as memories

and this pen

corroding that which

was left unspoken.

This is literally so in my case at present. Soon, soon I shall corrode what 'was left unspoken' into blogs that are left like dream-letters on doorsteps albeit:

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you. [7]

The 'Prithee' in '© Facebook' reminds me of some lines I translated in my poem 'Catullus in London' via some lines of Keats. [8] They are:

'Yours the rhyme in every line, my Muse

Sweetheart, be my Valentine, my Muse

Show how your dimpling kisses warm the waders

Lesbia irenic, earnest, tell the riaders

Tomorrow’s autumns of delations and

Noyades the unrepentant thieves command

Cadaverous faces in the cancerous gloom

Our thousand thousand more and more will bloom’ [9]

My thoughts on 'AND/RE' make me think of the second song from Tagore's Nobel prize winning Gitanjali:

When thou commandest me to sing it seems that my heart would break with pride; and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony - and my adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.

I know thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.

I touch by the edge of the far spreading wing of my song thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself and call thee friend who art my lord. [10]

And of my lines from 'Love is Better Than Wine'

I learn to live with what I've got and just then

Teeming tears of grief, flaccid pain

Tell me what I never had and where and when

My eyes can't contain

Light enough to know our days won't return

And it feels like I am close to passing out

Now the wings of tiny little angels burn

What's love all about?

Grace me with your Chardonnay kisses tonight

Scintillating stature in fur coat soused in

Bathed luminosities and glinting light

Let our life begin [11]

Because it dissolves in water. ^[1]

And to say this is to be cyclical as all things are. **That is the essential lesson of life, of flux within its continuum.** [6] I can hear the most sublime music and a beautiful love poem in 'Violin Heart' - "Tomorrow will be okay."

**My thoughts on 'AND/RE' make me think of the second song from Tagore's Nobel prize winning Gitanjali:**

If you do not turn round to look it doesn’t matter ^[12]

**The 'Sojournal' entries are the most unfeigned and lucid prose pieces I have read in a very long time, that the world needs for such things as are noticed, recorded, transformed, healed.**