Core Functions
Raza Ali Hasan | Poetry
mangled, left for dead,
by the mathematical elite,
had been on their long journey,
refractory like Eliot’s camels,
(read Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi”)
insistent—switching out tea for coffee,
insistent variations on the single theme of “x”:
some powerless as in x (weary countenance lined),
others squared, cubed as in x2 or x3, their curvy
loveliness for the mathematical inclined,
some were utterly changed
reciprocals of their original selves as in 1/x,
others withdrawn, inward,
not searching,
but splitting into roots as in √x
through the axial age,
refracted, reflected, compressed, shifted or stretched
across the cross of time,
and in the new dispensation,
acceptable to the commoners.
Raza Ali Hasan is the author of three books of poetry, Grieving Shias (Sheep Meadow Press, 2006), 67 Mogul Miniatures (Autumn House Press, 2009) and Sorrows of the Warrior Class (Sheep Meadow Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, and Crazyhorse. A small selection of his poems have been archived on Poetry Foundation Website. Currently, he is working on his forth poetry book, And So Moves the Universe. He is originally from Pakistan and came to America in 1991. He received his MFA from Syracuse University. He teaches in the English department at the University of Colorado at Boulder.