Cry the Beloved Earth
Samina Hadi-Tabassum
I want to live on a planet again
where the oxygen still flows
I want to swim in oceans again
without drowning in plastic
I want to climb trees again
without escaping fires
I want to walk on my ancestral land again
without the sound of drills
I want to drink that water again
without the taste of lead
I want to farm the earth again
where the harvest fills our bounty
Go, go, say it on the mountain, she said
Grown weary from the cry, go on, she said—
Before it all disappears.
Perhaps because the Gods will start listening
The skies will open up, pushing the smog aside
Perhaps because the stars will start aligning
The animals will come back, grazing my hands
The salamander will not lose its tail, she said.
The clouded leopard will keep its spots, she said.
The tigers and lions will roam free again, we shouted.
The bird songs will return again in the morning, we shouted.
Storms will no longer swallow whole countries in one giant vortex.
Tendrils of soil and sand will not drift away inch by inch.
The coral will sprout again like seeds planted in the ocean.
The canopies will darken the jungle again like moving shadows.
And I will have hope again as we wade into the shallow waters.
Wading slowly back into the waters from where we came.
Samina Hadi-Tabassum
Samina Hadi-Tabassum is an associate professor at Erikson Institute in Chicago. Her first book of poems, Muslim Melancholia (2017), was published by Red Mountain Press. She has published poems in Tin House, Clockhouse, Conduit, East Lit Journal, Soul-Lit, Journal of Postcolonial Literature, Papercuts, The Waggle, Indian Review, Classical Poets, Mosaic, Main Street Rag, Connecticut River Review, Pilgrimage Literary Journal, riksha, and These Fragile Lilacs. Her poems were performed on stage as a part of the Kundiman Foundation and Emotive Fruition event focusing on Asian American poetry in 2016. She was a 2018 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Performance finalist for the Guild Complex competition in Chicago. She has also published a short story titled “Maqbool” in New Orleans Review in June 2018; it is now a chapter in a Penguin anthology on Muslim writers.