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.