13 Insomniac Moons
Night ceases to be a sedative, a journey through wilderness,
weary traveller’s hammock, her trailing footprints or
that lingering winter breath. December, 3.01 AM
Night has become an unintelligible prescription,
January, 3.02 AM.
A busy courtroom, strangulated testimony,
dungeon where I wait for
that chance meeting with the executioner,
a sudden announcement.
February, 3.03 AM
No more a blank page of hope, a poet’s frenzy,
exile in womb, a quieter end. March, 3.04 AM
but one short
sentence of the final judgement
April, 3.05 AM
a hurried signature on the prison register
delirious memory of your face and
tufts of prostrate grass after a fanatic wind.
No more a madwoman’s refuge, night is, but the
hangman’s dawn. May, 3.06 AM
June, 3.07 AM
Painful than death itself, night is death’s keeper,
its stubborn reminder.
A waiting room— bleak walls, no doors,
windows, no patterns to count
to conquer time. A small crevice
but no desire to escape. July, 3.08 AM
August, 3.09 AM
Night, no longer
a geometry of stars but a turbulent sea of celluloid faces—
father’s, mother’s, brother’s, sister’s,
madwoman’s, hangman’s, cobbler’s, shepherd’s,
words, windows, mirrors, colours,
paper boats, yarn, speck,
winter, spring, summer, autumn
— sinking into abyss.
September, 3.10 AM
Night was to become the last sigh
in the death chamber before it escaped
and was martyred in some stranger’s eyes
in a mutiny. October, 3.10 AM
Nov, 3.12 AM
Elsewhere women bury all seasons in their bosom,
untangle each other’s hair. In a warm embrace they
sing lullabies and shower almonds[1] for
the last sacrifice— the last witness.
Echoes of a strangled song
I conjure you, your exiled face in the only bus coming from afar
towards me at midnight to this somnambulist city in plains.
Leaning on the hazy bus-window you bid farewell to the last meadows
on your way, the receding almond blossoms and saffron expanses.
On the backseat, huddled, you cling to yourself, your breath condensed
on the window glass, thinking of fires you could have lit and
poems you could have written.
Your only belongings: three cheap-brand damp cigarettes,
a torn ticket in your trembling hand, a half-remembered dream,
a pastel map of Old City[2]— its seven bridges in limbo,
Darwish’s[3]laments and a restless memory of the river.
From the land of witnesses—our home,
you carry souvenirs for you know me well, my obsessions.
I conjure you packing colours of autumn
and rubble from ruins where we first met,
debris of buried attar and broken limbs of our victory songs.
I conjure your feet, forehead, palms, eyes, face…
a city carved out of our bodies; our city of crowded asylums
and sacrificial streets, secret songs and frisked breaths.
A city in mourning, a city in wait, a city kneeled in prayer,
Srinagar—our city, our elegy.
I conjure you conjuring me gazing at empty picture frames and searching
vacant drawers treasuring your absence. An outburst of rain in plains
sing for your arrival, lilies blossom from foot sores of a rickshawalla
and I trace your amaranthine footprints on my memory.
At my doorstep I find mementos waiting to be taken in
but no trace of your retreating footsteps.
I conjure you traversing landscapes of forgetfulness, defying
fortified borders, a lilac silence growing over us, its odour trailing
and
songs strangled growing like a lump in our throats.
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[1] Mourners, particularly women, as a ritual during funerals shower almonds on the bodies of people killed by
armed forces in Indian-administered Kashmir. Those killed are considered ‘martyrs’.
[2]Located on the banks of river Jhelum, Kashmir’s Old City in Srinagar dates back to the medieval times and is connected through seven centuries old bridges.
[3]Darwish here refers to the noted Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
