Excerpted from ‘The mysterious visitor’ by Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky...
By Tehzeeb Sialvi
All my life,
I have been driven by obsessions,
Reigned and ruled over,
By compulsions.
There is a voice in my head.
Constantly compelling me to do,
And repeat things over.
It is like a living hell.
Having no liberty,
To free myself,
From intrusive thoughts.
Even the slightest bit of disorder,
Agitates me to the core.
Each and every thing,
Must be symmetrical;
Aligned at an angle.
The invisible dirt,
On my hands,
Does not go at any cost,
I already washed them;
Thrice.
And I am still compelled,
To continue.
I assure myself,
That I locked the door,
But the obsession isn’t satisfied.
Compulsion arises to go and check,
Not once, but over and over.
Until I am frustrated.
But I can’t help it.
As,
It’s not me;
It’s the voice inside,
That is,
Intruding my sane mind.
Spirit, lovely guest, who are you?
Whence have you flown down to us?
Taciturn and without a sound
Why have you abandoned us?
Where are you? Where is your dwelling?
What are you, where did you go?
Why did you appear,
Heavenly, upon the Earth?
Excerpted from ‘The mysterious visitor’ by Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky, the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century.
By Ali Asghar Ghani
Like a garden
chaotic, dark mind
grow
red roses
of words
Alarming
attitudes
By Nazish Sabir
The surge in expectations
With days passing by
Loping aside the hope
We might be welcoming
Something dark lingering around our present and levelling to the future
As we desperately want it to arrive
Compiled by SK
