by Javeed Ahmad Rather
“Splinters and ashes,
Shrieks and smoke
Noise of wails,
Frightful mourning
Scary gun powder,
Bloody stones,
Borders,
Homes afire
Trenches with skeletons,
Ramparts, and repentant time,
Scattered scriptures,
Wet soil and
Thetearful eyes of Freedom”
This is where the scars have healed.
This is where new injuries can happen.
At an impossible hour
When death arrived
The July vacation
Taking us by surprise.
All the separated were united by woe.
You have given us million reasons to stay united.
With you we have constructed a history.
Though your death leave us with cloudy sky,
But today’s dawn was nothing like any other morning,
We were discussing ‘heroism’.
Heroism made us mindful
Of disappearance and fake encounters,
Of checkpoints and closed roads…
We are not at peace,
The sand settled for thousands years,
Is agitated
With hooves of pacing stead.
History of thousand years is flowing within me.
The moment
We all had waited for
Has arrived
But we are hapless as ever…
Nothing is left
No season
No dream
But the desire;
Desire of freedom
Though we are held-up in a dark abyss
With no ray of light
Oozing in from anywhere,
Yet the desire rose,
Full of passion,
Like leaves in this plague of seasons.
All eyes
Dry
Parched
Coverless
Leafless
Shorn of moisture
Grown unaccustomed
Of the taste; of red weeping blood
But the desire of freedom is yet to wither all of them across borders.
It just begun.
We decipher the message of freedom
Every now and then
It descends upon us like rainfall,
In an uncanny silence!
Blood turned into fossil fuel,
All the wells of fear are on fire.
All ills will end
Images of starving children
Homeless women
Young people being tortured
The injustice of the oppressor
Will disappear,
Fragments will come together
In a slow motion
And night will become day.
I see him on the bier,
In his red torn clothes and resurrected.
I believe that heaven must encompass
This boy properly shod and crowned.
Martyrs rule the world
Burhan will lead from tomb.
Through you,
Freedom and the sea
Will call in answer
To the shrouded heart…
Yes Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely-flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
(Javeed Ahmad Rather studied English Literature at CUK)
