The Rozakii Poem of Colyne Stewart

For Duchess Kaylah the Cheerful upon her Elevation to the Order of the Pelican

By TH Laird Colyne Stewart, Feb AS 51 (2017)

Serving is a calling            sloth is retreating before it          ·

Study of noblesse            the serious woman is knowing

Based on “The Mongolian Poem of Muhammad al-Samarqandi” (1290s), which, in English, reads:

Knowledge is an ocean, the jewel retreats before it, the law of knowledge, the wise man knows

In the original Mongolian, the poem consists of four verses. The first, third and fourth verses alliterated with other. As well, the verb endings repeated in the first, second and fourth verses. I have imitated this by alliterating the letter S (the fact that the second verse also alliterates is either an added bonus or a failure on my part to adhere to the original) and by having three verbs ending in “ing”. The only punctuation in the original was a single dot between the first two verses and the last two (which I have also done).

Just as the original poet (who was Persian) wrote of a culture other than his own, do I write of a household not my own (which also allows me to mimic the original poem’s title).

Sources

The Poem of Muhammad al-Samarqandi, http://www.linguamongolia.com/Muhammad%20al-Samarqandi.pdf

De Rachewiltz, Igor. “The Mongolian Poem of Muhammad al-Samarqandī ,” Central Asiatic Journal,

Vol. 12, No. 4 (1969), pp. 280-285, Published by: Harrassowitz Verlag. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41926793

For Her Excellency Christiana MacNamara upon being named a Vigilant for the Order of the Pelican

THLaird Colyne Stewart, December AS 49 (2014)

A martyr for her children

Mother bird sits atop her nest

And feeds her young her gushing blood

Pouring forth from her pierced breast

And like this bird a mother bear

In cave cares for her cubs newborn

Protects them from the wind and rain

From talon, claw and ripping thorn

She leads through drought, the arid heat,

Through storm and sleet and tempest gale

And shoulders through the snowy drifts

To keep her young all well and hail

Like a winged snail she is a home

Who welcomes in her loving brood

Her brood the people of the land

Being the high born and the crude

Her sacrifice and toil find

Favoured grace in the royal eyes

And wolfen rulers call to her

And praise her virtues to the skies

Christiana, bear, recognized

For deeds well done and reckoned true

Named a Peer of the northern land

Whose many toils were not yet through.

A ballad.