Poems | Taseer Gujral

 Artwork : Matthew Bialer

1.

It was a strange day when

We had met for the last time

I do remember some fading details

Perhaps I saw some ants tracing patterns

in the ground, when we were together 

Or had we met midway

in the course of our walk ?

Was it morning or an autumn afternoon ?

All I can recollect now is the rustle of my dupatta

That had stirred you to look back vaguely 

While I ambled along

A barbet flew, plugging the gaps in our

silent conversation 

Or was it a thrush ?

But I do remember you stopped

and sat on a grey rock

Then prodding the ants from their inert activity

With your gleaming stick

You had traced a pattern

Or was it my name ?

And then you had said something , that is vivid, yes

Something you had said

While all I could hear was the wails of leaves

and your inevitable footsteps receding

into a leafy green haze

2. 

We have talked so much 

Words are dead bees

Yet songs keep pouring

Like honey

My lips are wet clouds

Flying over our silence

and

It keeps raining

It keeps raining

3.

Mother, sing me that song again 

Even when I was a child

I could never sleep on new sheets

They were like dead notes

of a beautiful ghazal

The familiarity of coarse threads, 

rung through my body like a thumri,

nascent and raw

Sing, sing again

4.

Not till I had watched

In rapt wonder 

Bees floating on light 

June afternoon heat,

did I realize how much 

I liked this sight

Not till I had felt

The dark in my bones

after the moon had swum in shadows 

And the clouds morphed into wet ghosts,

did I realize how much

I liked the feel

of wet monsoon lips

pressing against mine

in the dark

like a secret lover

I don't think I like winter as much

as the sight of cashmere and shawls

and blue teapots

inviting all cold to seep into their recesses

For some seasons we imagine we love

breathe in us for strange reasons

Reasons we had once forsaken

and never known existed