Image: Jehangir Sabavala/The Bridge/2004
How Far was Your Lane?
How far was your lane, Dilbar? A hand or two, yet we set out a hundred times, paused
a thousand times. In the weak shadow of your winter sun, time was called on our sins. We
stood up, torn palms stitched from penitence. We have more to sell, less to lend. We
mortgaged the dust of our sorrows and grafted our hidden shadows cast by
the adolescent moon that hangs uneasy over us, waiting for
the almond blossom to bloom into a thousand bombshells of empty words.
In empty words, exile weeps like autumn weeps quietly surrounded by leaves in
ripe summer.
In those ripe summers who could have guessed which dust was the dust of our nation. We
set out dust in our halfhearted eyes, and dust in our hearts. We recalled those old poems in which we
wept after raking the tales of our youth. Often, after regaling friends with
our tales, we wept. Whenever conversation revolved around the many attractions in
your lane and the busy market, why did Joseph weep, listening at the bottom of the well? We swore by the honour of love and cried lood many times over in your memory. We heard your words from the eavesdropping lips of others and wept. When we saw bloom on the faces of strangers, we took
out your old pictures of curfewed summers and wept.
We exhibit your tyranny to mourn for us. We weep that you may weep.
We were crafted from pale icicles and glass eyed snow yet burn like crematoriums.
Many suns were sunk in us to diminish your shadow. On the coast of your memory we sit having scattered all our pearls A wave of rief rises in our blood to renew us.
With our bitter poison we burnished the rust off all old wounds of words
to record the forgotten history of future misgivings.
What are these wrangled borders that chain our feet, we set off towards
home again, yet again.
**
It Was the Year of Brilliant Water
I
It was the year of brilliant water when you threw
Us out from your gathering, and the unease crept back
into our torn hearts. Again
we sought an appointment with your poems
under the porcelain moon,
which crumbled in the cold of our hands.
We owe you a return to the hysterical grief of our
lovers, to the exiles from the face of your faded letters,
or a surrender to the hand of old disconsolate enemies.
Where do you take us over the steep slopes of our stars
in the silver of dawn? We will sleep on the beds of old chandeliers,
and dream of flowers in the vanished paradise.
We will write our exile in the unlettered wind.
Awaken the stars, sword and the flute. Retract your song
and pray a cure floods your eyes, red as our rivers,
just as Ghalib predicted before the massacre.
II
Like impoverished lovers after the massacre,
we were scattered as dust on the roads
to the promised revolution, a forgotten
memory of musk. How long more can we
guard this heart in the eye of the tyranny of the storm of hope?
What have we borne, what must be borne still?
How long will you withhold your memory?
The season of sight and hope is long past, and
the dust of the stars caresses the rebel face of despair
in the heart. When will the cloud of pain burst down?
If only the heart were a sparrow, it would fly
to the distant star of the songs of victory of enemies,
for defeat is indeed a forlorn friend.
*******
Note Cover image courtesy: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/jehangir-sabavala-the-bridge
Huzaifa Pandit is a poet and translator and currently teaches English literature at Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora, J&K, India. He is the author of the recently published 'Green is the Colour of Memory', which won the first edition of Rhythm Divine Poets Chapbook Contest ..
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