Dr. Aziz Mustafa: Poet and Physician

Dr Aziz Mustafa
Evolution's Everywhere

One of our several Emanations writers, Philip Murray-Lawson, who blogs at Evolution's Everywhere, has recently posted an interview: "Poetry, Medecine and Mensa in Kosovo - Dr Aziz Mustafa" (September 2, 2015). Dr. Mustafa is also a writer, and a few of his poems have been translated into English for publishing in Emanations.

He even provided a short poem for this interview with Murray-Lawson, a poem written 22 years ago, when Dr. Mustafa was about 40, I guess, because 40 is considered the halfway mark in life, so he titled it "Half Life" (if I might take the liberty of capitalizing the word "life"):

Half Life

The half of my life passed,
Doing continues sins,
Will I have the other half,
To expiate them?

An interesting little poem, but I wonder if "continues" is the right term. Shouldn't that be "continuous"? I'd also delete a couple of commas and insert a period, as here:

Half Life

The half of my life passed
Doing continuous sins.
Will I have the other half
To expiate them?

As for capitalizing the first word of each line . . . that is a poetic convention. But I'd suggest the following:

Half Life

The half of my life passed
doing continuous sins.
Will I have the other half
to expiate them?

This is the sort of thing I spend a lot of time doing - no, not expiating my sins, but editing texts by other people - so I hope my suggested changes won't be taken amiss.

I could even get it to rhyme . . . but I won't go that far.