Sad Short Poems

Sadness

May God keep sadness away from us and you. Sadness is a state often expressed through isolation, crying, anger, or even writing. In this article, I aim to focus on expressing sadness through writing, offering a selection of poignant poems on the theme of sorrow.

Short Sad Poems

• Oh, how immense the pain when nothing can be done

The wounds are from the close ones, the faults lie within me!

If I intended to soothe my soul, I found no means at all

How shall I find peace when my wound was betrayed by my right hand?

And if my eyes wish to weep, the tears turn into a chariot

Oh, how heavy it gets when my heart’s worries combine with the heaviness of my eyes!

Oh, my worries! They’ve surpassed their limits and now feel burdensome

Take from me a few questions and if you please, answer me

Why, after (faithfulness and kindness) and noble deeds

Is it from the very hands I respected that the first stab to me comes?

And why, if space tightens in the eyes of the one who has been betrayed?

All I found was (blame) to conclude this and reveal me?

Oh my worries, oh my wounds, oh echo of a suffering soul

By Allah, the oppression has chained my tongue and my hands!

When they said, “Look, your envious one has increased in his gossip”

All I could say was, “Oh world, have mercy on me”

If I spoke and brought forth my proof and disproof

It would not disturb one who has chosen me in his heart!

And if I remained silent, saying time eases worries and years fade

I found that (years) pass but the anguish remains within me

Only for the one who has taken up the mighty lineage of my ancestors and tribe

By Allah, I would rather consume bitterness and withstand what comes to me

As long as there’s no embrace in the cosmos to pour my heart into

And as long as no eye exists that can read my sorrow, which has enveloped me

All I have left are verses from poetry, which I remember every single night

As the debate between my heart and my eyes continues endlessly

• I gathered my poetry, burned my notebooks, and under the candlelight, I shed my tears

My tear fell upon my candle, announcing then that my life has become darkness without you, my beloved.

• Oh my eyes, do not fear love within me

And oh my sorrows, do not kill my nights

If I knew that love could be summarized

I would have condensed the entire alphabet

Oh, how wretched it would be if love dies within me

There will be no life left in time

• Thank you for loving me

From your existence, you deprived me

With utmost tenderness, you left me

And with the same delicacy, you have slain me

With a lover’s affection, you caused me to forget

And loved another because I

Thought that your love was everything that mattered to me

Thank you for loving me

For you abandoned me, causing me pain

You killed my heart, no, by God

But you actually killed me

• Patience, my heart, and wait; let sorrow remain unspoken

All meanings have changed, and the picture has become clear

In this time, honesty seems as rare as loyalty

Our souls are wounded, and joy lies shattered

All principles vanish, and those with them are up for sale

Even feelings have lost their value, and words are squandered

Poems on Sadness

Poets have crafted some of the most beautiful and heartbreaking verses on various topics related to sadness, including the following selections:

Poem: A Glimpse of Sadness

Issa Al-Sheikh Hassan

Like lovers on the first night

We urge the songs towards their grass

As time opens our distant dreams

We lose our names in departure

An anguished breath, perhaps it’s possible to wager my death

On a single drop that remains

To await my return to the Sheikh’s hymn

When he returns to his roses

And weeps in the second prostration

Like mothers

Chattering full of maudlin tales

I hide within my veils

Far removed from the palm-trees

The mournful voice presents itself, without tender strokes

To clarify what I see in our heights

Yet no moon bathes in the night of visions

Nor does a swallow stretch to what the breezes breathe

The sun-kissed days

And its pistachio blooms

That the stories overlooked from the winter chill

In the incoming wheat

I now share with you these laments

This pain that emerges from the agony

This rain

The day that passes by my door; a friendly death

As I return

A being made of roses

I gasp through all the space

Counting the sins I have not tasted

Counting the faces shaped by agonies in my letters

And all the faces that played the mask game

And passed me in their smock of advice

Oh, and I know my heart

Will leave me, with my sluggish strides

In the throng of wanderers

It will drown in something they call yearning

And I have no power

To masquerade its rushes

Knowing I persevered for it

And polished the roses of reproach

And mastered counting its steps

But

It shall walk alone

And proceed toward a summary of absence

I know it’s ashamed and obstinate

And will not bow to weeping

If the letters lamented it

And shaded it under the trellis of grapes

And I know it

When it glimpses my sorrow at night

From the songs

And the cup of poetry

Sings to them

And roams in far-off places

With the whispering of its moans

Indeed

And I know it, as my mother fills their glass

With tea

And ignites a field of memories

Perhaps on the fire some kindling

And I know it will not return my greetings

Nor will it celebrate my wounds

Indeed, I reproach

Because I was very late in reaching it

When the pigeon woke

To a stab in the gentle evening

Indeed

And it stretches the oceans toward its night

Then rushes

Engaging the glow of the mid-afternoon

Wasting its intoxication

And claims that the dove at the dot of noon sings

And I know my heart

It delights in filling the letters of the land

And guards the significance of the whiteness

Which shrinks until it turns black

As it does not delight in witnessing the tribe disgrace

Nor resting a helmet

And hasn’t learned from the river how to travel without its pebbles

And hasn’t learned from others the art of gossip

In this way, its dreams did not deviate from the text

The clouds

Did not cease their handkerchiefs from singing

And I know it

Does not yearn for me

And I am lost — I used to be — in gathering my longing

Without any excuse to entertain myself by turning it

And without shaking in the anxiety of my hands

I call the day the harvest of the soul

Singing without a cloud

That meanders the birds back toward the sunset

And tosses away what remains of antiquated deeds

Words of whinnying

And from my weeping over compassion’s remnants

Seeking refuge in my bleeding

And in my prayers on the shore of night

An ancient chapter of grammar

Exceeding in the delights of the witnesses

For me, there is a distance between beautiful stillness

And the melodies that washed me

With prolonged sorrow

And I have my own burdens

If my heart breaks between my fingers

And leans over a wilted flower

It should amuse me, letting me and my sluggish steps

To roam among the crowd

And I am suffering endlessly

If you leave me, my companion on this journey

And say: you were late for me

And you have indulged in a deadly separation

Who will take comfort in my lament?

And who will adorn my small grave with a dirge?

Thus I proceed far, far away

To my family’s records

To the home of my heart

But my heart shall walk alone

To nestle in a space of song

Longing for a torrential downpour

However, I fear that if I weep, they will awaken

To wet my tears with their dreams

So I laugh

I laugh

I laugh

Until the free weeping comes

And I keep all that the stars left behind of light

Clearing the path

And I possess each sigh of sorrow

That bubbles from clay

And the sorrowful day’s grass

And there, a good ember remains

By which my good brothers die

It translates our ashes

And reads our weary days

Poem: Anger and Sadness

Mohammed Darwish

The voice on your lips does not please

And the fire in your lungs cannot overcome

Your father’s father is crucified upon the shoe of an immigrant

And her lips offer you instead while her bosom milks

So why do you not rage?

Yesterday we met on the path of night from the place of evenings

Your lips are heavy-laden with every pain from a withered oak

And for the five-hundredth time, you recounted to me the love of someone and the desire for another

A bottle of cognac

The tents, and the Yemeni sword

Uselessly numbing your open wound

The orgy of the bottles

Uselessly bending your desires with the fiery wishes of the night

The wind on your lips demolishes what you built of songs

So why do you not rage?

They said smile to live

So your eyes smiled at the road

And your eyes rejected a heart that is consumed by flames

And you swore to me that you are happy, oh comrade

And read the philosophy of the smiles of the slaves

Wine and greens and the graceful body

So if you see my blood in your wine

How will you drink, oh comrade?

The village and the ruins

The watchman and the land and the ruins

The trunks of your olive trees

Nests of owls or crows

Who prepared the plow this year

Who raised the soil?

Oh you, where’s your brother, where’s your father?

They are a mirage

From where did you come? From a wall?

Or did you descend from the clouds?

Do you see the preservation of the dignity of the dead?

And knock at the end of the night’s door?

So why do you not rage?

Do you love her?

I loved before you

And trembled on her shady braids

She was beautiful

But she danced on my grave and my few days

And surrounded herself and the others in a long dance

And you and I reproach history

And the knowledge that lost masculinity

Who are we?

Let the impetuosity of the streets

Quench the shame of our murdered banner

So why do you not rage?

We carried sadness for years and the dawn did not rise

And sadness is a fire that quells our desires

And awakens them with winds

And the wind to you, how can it be stilled?

And what weapon do you have?

Except meeting the wind and the flames

In a free homeland

Poem: Abstract Sadness

Taleb Hamash

I asked you, my friend:

What despair has taken hold of you tonight?

You lit your candles of weeping

I placed my hands on your aged face

Wiping away an ancient sorrow

I found your heart has died

A long time ago

And your soul flowed with the tears

To betray you!

Are you sad until the end of the spirit

Until the flute sends you away?!

Alas! I raised my lamp for your eyes

That I may see you

I saw you drunk, weeping

Your tears wet your beard

While the flute tends to your affairs!

You seemed distant, making me feel this lifetime is lonely

Until I longed for you, oh stranger

And when I sought you out

I perceived your thirst for distant grief—

Weeping!

Oh Father of sorrow

How could you allow your orphans to weep?

Over this lament?!

And how did you leave the long tales hanging

And the violins crying for your sorrows?