Wednesday 10 September 2014

Poetry 2014 Shortlist, Moin-ud-din Mehraj

River of Nothingness

Amidst all, against all
you have a secret in your eyes
loneliest of all
laying there petrified in thousand pages of past
I see you sitting all day, alone, again
on the staircases
of this nostalgic void.
You conceal.
Did I tell you
silence, spoke today?
You close the doors
behind all the silence you have ever heard.
You cry.
The hummingbird of longing has died
in my arms.
I am quiet.
Time is frozen on your lips
like red wine
your eyes mystical like eternity.
I have swallowed the last morsel
of your memory.
Some years more, some minutes more
and I am going to ask the sea
about the coming autumn, about you
I search.

I always assume your whereabouts
in my exile
I assume the gestures
your dreams make in your eyes while
you sleep.
From the windows of these silent dawns
I put my hand
on your loneliness
and we get old in pain.
Leaves are withered in the garden now
branches have outgrown
from solitude
Our absence lingers under the maple shade
effortlessly, unasked
and watchful for any kind of companionship—
a leaf
 a round brown pebble
a fist full of dust
any.

I saw a dream
and you were already walking past the seas
of inconsolable tears.
Are we abandoned yet?
Has life knifed me in my dreams?
I will always find you in these absurd nights.
When only the
winter we knew will bloom
running in our arms
from
the wilderness.
Silence is tangled in my footsteps
and I have never been
this lonely
yet I have come to meet you.

I see you
you see me—
reflections on the rivers of nothingness.

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