Analysis of Flower of Punjab



The orange moon ascends beyond the leaves
Like a child's balloon: upward it looms
Against nebulous night, upward it heaves
Its ancient amber light until it blooms
Like a lotus in the vacuous sky ...

There, alone below the moon's tender glow,
Haleema holds back tears wondering why
Her dear love had to die. Creeds cannot know
The love that lovers undergo, nor feel
Or fathom its sacred birth: when two souls
Touch in a plain beyond this earth and reel
In deepest ecstasy. Yet now there rolls
Soft tears from the heart of a broken soul
Whose only love, by a murderous plot,
Was killed on a leisurely moonlit stroll,
Because he was a Sikh, and she was not.


Scheme ABABC DCDEFEFGHGH
Poetic Form
Metre 0101010101 101011011 0110011011 1101010111 1010001001 1010101101 11111001 0111111101 011100111 1101101111 1001011101 0101001111 1110110101 1101101001 111010011 0111010111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 656
Words 124
Sentences 5
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 5, 11
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 259
Words per stanza (avg) 60

About this poem

I wanted to write a poem of love that highlighted the tragic aspects of religious persecution, but in such a way as to avoid pointing a finger toward a particular religious group or affiliation. The Flower of Punjab slowly came to me, and I worked on it for about a week. It is a short story of love and tragedy that I enjoyed working on and hope you like.

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Written on June 25, 2022

Submitted by Vixility on August 27, 2022

Modified on March 23, 2023

37 sec read
393

John W. May

John W. May has lived in Colorado all his life. He currently works in the field of ophthalmology and loves to mountain bike and read about history. John first became a lover of poetry in 2008 after having read a poem by John Milton. He has been reading and studying the works of various poets since. His favorite poets are Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Tyutchev and W. B. Yeats. more…

All John W. May poems | John W. May Books

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