As If and Other Poems

Insha Muzafar

 

Poem I

As If

As if all that existed could ever be

more than my remembrance

and your penchant for lost things

contrary to your scepticism

I believe in these dreams of bread;

the hunger of words

(swirling inside the voids of mirrors)

for the stones of truth

as if the overgrown plane trees

have stopped making nests of time

in the autumn of our bodies

you doubt that the scars shall not outlast

the perpetuity of seasons

hearing the gravedigger singing to lote tree

you hold my hand like a shrine ingress

as if returning from your absurd journey

you shall encounter all the dead

nobody dares to claim the kinship of courtyards;

the figs of today

dismembering into haikus of absence

as if naming a beloved were some form of allegiance

 

Poem II

I Saw

 

I saw you walking through

the darkness of mirrors

and the salt turned into Eye

I saw an old woman weeping

while burying the moon in an empty paddy field

and the roads defaced milestones in the fear of being redundant

there was a girl

(so the story goes)

who used to make windows of rain

for the fear of being forgotten

I saw the river disconsolately sighing

in the silence riddled landscape of loss

and called your name to know if it was her___

 

Poem III

Shadows of clouds rain

on the threshold of your house

and you weep

because the nights are too long

and waiting transcends horizons of dawn

moon splits the bones

into the anguish of prison cries

and the smoke of burnt houses

makes haloes around the sun

travel then

through this wilderness

that others called soul

and map the contours of fading images

on canvas of your knotted memory

 

Insha Muzafar is a poet based in Kashmir

 

 

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