Humiliated: every memory, all promises; Death snaps the cord of hope....
By Asna Safdar
I
The heart settles for nothing.
Clarity leaves me wanting
On bare sidewalks
Of mediocre existence.
At home, the silence screams
At work, the noise
Beats my eardrums numb.
Dear mother, I am tired.
How do you live a century half
So warm, so alive?
Dare I tell you
I have lived and I have ceased?
Unwise like a twelve
Demented like an eighty
I have aged, in my sleep,
In the nauseating, dull hours
Of cooped indoor evenings,
In the aching, unwilling
Disenchantment of workday mornings.
You think I am away
Learning to save lives
While I become a disbeliever
Of love and life.
II
I have learned to tell apart
The dying and the dead.
A lifetime of toil, giving, settling
- Always for less -
All in the dread of the fabled loneliness
And yet in the final moments
It is I, the white-garbed stranger,
Subject to their last appeal.
Eyes roll up and lips part
Colour drains and they lie still
Like wax dolls.
Mere chaara-gar ko naweed ho
Saf-e-dushmanan ko khabar karo
Jo wo qarz rakhte the jaan par
Wo hisab aaj chuka diya
(“Give tidings to my caregiver,
Inform the enemy lines
The debt they owed to my life,
Today that account has been settled.”)
Faiz knows the caretaker,
The chaarah-garr has had enough
As she turns to break the news.
Static. Resentment.
Our mass, gross powerlessness.
Attachment holds pain over
Our unsuspecting heads
Dangerously low.
Humiliated: every memory, all promises;
Death snaps the cord of hope.
What an act in the name of living!
So easy to convince,
So ready to believe;
Human innocence is baffling.
III
Just when I learned
To paint my face better
And youth finally agreed
I find we are bound
To meet such ugly ends
It will be hard to fathom
We were ever beautiful.
You think lonely is what you are
When a room empties
The chatter stops
A love leaves
A parent dies
If only you knew
The loneliness that awaits you -
Awaits us all.
Compiled by SK
