One must have a mind of winter, To regard the frost and the boughs, Of the pine-trees crusted with snow....
By Ayesha Malik
In a weakened state
My senses awake
I aim to retaliate
In turn I satiate
In turn I inebriate
My starved whims
Scatter in ruins
Lost in a heap of grins
I silently gulp the drinks
Of melancholy and sins
Hitting my callused shins
Letting the blood drain
Staining the long terrain
I leave behind a trail
A red twisting train
Of lost dreams and wishes
Awashed by time’s lashes
I cringe, crouch and curl
I hide from the shining pearl
The shine is a facade
Veiling the dark arts
I am content in the dark
Safe as a sleeping skylark
By Amna Siddiqui
In glorious waves of nebulous strength
When you punctured the liquid sky to oblivion
The hues that crawled under your skin; incandescent
Manifested:
The waters that drown you
The people that break you
The calamities that shake you
The noises that haunt you
The forests that scare you
The lights that blind you
Harness the horizon emanating your name again
Watch thunder being struck again
Etched in a cobweb of yellow, red, blue and green
Enslaved by the ever-changing hands of time:
Breathe, and the worlds commune
Scream, and the words collude
Live, and the truths ensue
Bit by bit, pixel by pixel
Each grain of sand
Each colour in the expanse
All parts of you
All stars in the cosmos
All connected to you:
Embrace the symphony of this kaleidoscopic mind.
The Snow Man
By Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
