“My ancestors sought God in silence,
I seek Man amidst the thunder of falling empires.”
What is water, if not the mirror of our condition?
It flows, it yields, it ascends as vapor—
Yet it returns.
Always.
Even when unseen, it is.
So too is Love—elusive, reshaped, yet eternal.
And yet, like water choked by poison,
Even Love now breeds discord and devours its own name.
We are told there are two forces:
Love and Fear—
But both have been sold as currency in markets run by demagogues and demigods.
In lands that call themselves free,
Fear walks with the flag.
Love wears camouflage.
The heart—once the seat of Divine fire—
Now flutters under the weight of ideologies crafted by men without vision.
From the pulpits to the parliaments,
From partitioned lands to algorithmic feeds,
Love has changed its shape,
And so has the mirror in which man sees himself.
Have we forgotten that “Allah” and “Om”
Are but songs of the same yearning?
What is the face that wears them both
But a canvas torn by borders drawn in the minds of the colonized?
You speak of scripts—Arabic, Devanagari,
You tattoo Mother on both—
But the henna bleeds differently in Lahore and in Delhi.
And yet, the pain is shared.
The artist’s face is one,
But the world insists it must be two.
Is it not so that the Divine was made a pretext for profit?
That the Cross sailed with cannons,
And the Crescent was broken into pieces
By those who once shared the same prayer?
Iqbal said:
“Nations are born in the hearts of poets,
They prosper and die in the hands of politicians.”
And so, from Pahalgam to Gaza,
From deported souls in Kabul
The poets still sing, but the world no longer listens.
They want slogans. Not soul.
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Colonialism did not leave.
It only changed names.
The masters now speak your tongue,
But still divide your house.
We have come far—
Yet the question remains:
Are we Muslim first, Indian second?
Or human last?
Afghan refugees turned away,
And the poor man hungers under both democracy and theocracy,
What flag shall he salute?
What God will answer his hunger?
Perhaps it is time—
Not to kill in the name of God,
But to live in the name of Love.
Not the love that burns cities
Or slaughters the innocent at prayer,
But the Love that led Rumi to whirl
And the Prophet to weep.
In the end, Love is not a banner.
It is water—
It heals, it shapes,
It returns.
But will we return with it?
Inspired by Muhammad Iqbal, co-created with ChatGPT