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The Poetry Issue 2023: Behind the Seen and other poems

The Poetry Issue 2023: Behind the Seen and other poems

Behind the Seen


Iridescent blue stars dangle 
On the insides of my eyelids
In daytime darkness, 
The sunlight caresses the outside

My space, my universe

*

The language of thunder
In the pitter patter of rain
With slashes of lightening

My dialogue, my silence

*

Dewdrops on rose petals
Falling on thorny branches
Homing on pebbles and rocks

My emotions, my thoughts

*

Streaming down the windowpane 
Is the rain water filled with 
Bits of the rainbow 
Chopped and capsuled

My grief, my pains

*

Big round red moon, hanging
In the blue-black bowl above
Defying the stillness of the oceans
With the ebb and flow of the tide 

My love, my passion

*

Who can cross the border and return
Who can rise from the ashes of the pyre
Can the corpse walk out of the grave

My ghost, my self



Homing



Tibetan refugees hang their prayer flags
Red blue and yellow
In a string across roof tops
Fluttering with wafts of breeze 
Coming from their homeland Tibet

In the anguish of exile they 
Twist and turn, get knotted
And entwined in the rocky
Indian soils

And as in their homes
Reptiles and worms feed on each other
The same devils 
The same angels

Buddha with the same benign smile
The same compassion
Offering sustenance
To colours dispersing
In the nothingness of vacant skies



Unsaid


The bleating black lamb
Stretched his hind legs 
backwards
with the forelegs 
at the farthest;

The green farms
In between

*

The heavy udders of
Himalayan goats

Black rain-filled clouds

Holding on 
for redemption

*

The sun slips down 
The horizon

To emerge at dawn

Buddha’s smile
Stays stable




Father’s Mantra 


‘Breathe in, breathe out
Take deep long breaths’
        was his mantra 

The little boy playing in the park 
The maid who cooked for him
The guest who came to see him
The mantra was passed on
Ceremoniously, without a grin,
At times, with a demonstration 
stretched to absurdity 
                       The mantra was his obsession

His eyes stalked the ants lining 
Up the Neem tree
As he inhaled 
the air through the leaves 
His lungs bloating, expanding  
As a reservoir of life

At seven, sleepwalking on the 
crumbling and linked terraces
Of the ramshackle houses in Sialkot
Baba Nanak had come to him stealthily
In a vision or a dream?

Did he receive the mantra then
For the dear and not so dear ones

He was the chosen one 
With premonitions of the apocalypse 
Of the assaults on human lungs  

‘Breathe in, breathe out
Take deep long breaths’
His mantra is everyone’s mantra today 

He is no more
Breaths not taken 
Remain in service of others now



Circular Paths


At dawn today
in the jungle
Kaurvas and Pandavas
stood ready for battle

War cries rose 
from Keekar bushes
 
The winds whistled 
beckoning the
golden chariot to pierce 
dark clouds 
and arrive with 
reason and light
to suspend 
the daily Mahabharat 

*

Peepal and neem
Side and side
Let their leaves
Fall in the unison
Of yellow, green and
Brown

Dead hopes and wishes
In many hues
Fly away with the westward
Winds

Making space for
New leaves on their
Branches

These poems were part of The Poetry Issue 2023, curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of these poems should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.   


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