Laaltain

ہمارے لیے لکھیں۔

Two Poems by Sarim Baig

test-ghori

test-ghori

27 فروری, 2015

You are the Smoke

You are the smoke,
at the center of my eye:
you are,
shattered like the universe.

You are the smoke
falling along
the pillars of creation:
I look at you and reflect.

I ponder, the symmetry of the world,
and I: the complete nonsense
of its beginning.

You are the daze
of this passion,
the craze of this urge
to explain abstraction
in better words.

Better words: thoughtful,
tighter, better verse,
provocative,
invocative,
decorative invention
may define you
but, I don’t define you,
you are smoke,
to me,

You are the force of
the metaphor
I can’t imagine.

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As I leave from here

I’ve gathered what’s mine in my pockets
and I’m laying the rest to waste,
and I’ve asked directions, and I think I know
the turns, the ways to go.
Laying the rest to waste:

I would stop at a cafe
whose colors I like, love, but not indulge myself.
I’d eat as I hunger and
drink as I thirst,
and pay for so much, and no more.
I’d imagine at the exact volume
noise, so it is music:
and breath in, and hold there
no more air than I can hold.

I’d ignore myself in the elements:
a beam of sun on grains of soil, such as,
I’d turn from my reflections,
and tufts of dead grass in marble walls,
I’d turn.
I’d not be curious of the cultures,
of laughs I can’t tell between men’s or women’s
I won’t tell,
and I won’t name professions I can’t name,
and businesses I don’t recognize.
I’d not recognize.
I’d not understand,
footages of wars I don’t understand.

I said I shall not understand.
Because there’s nothing in nature and people:
in people’s nature, and nature’s people
that is mine.
But these:
brushes against the shoulders of strange women,
the starts of their faces turning to apologize,
the dots of static on the TV screen.
These I’ve gathered in my pockets
and asked directions, and I think I know,
the ways to go.

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(Sketch by Faheem Abbas)