“When I go, you’ll remember these things.”
She’s laughing now, at me,
As I did, in response to her fuss,
But that line is lingering now
While she potters about, in her way.
I watch, knowing I will remember these things
When I try to pull her presence
Out of the colours around me.
No one can build me up
Because she’s done that, always.
But I’ll be like the hulked up tower
Looming into the dour night
Crumbling and caving to the rot
When she’s no long there
To hold up the walls.
By Ali. A. Naqvi
She calls it the murderous ten,
The years from sixty to seventy
When her friends begin to fall
And she feels herself gnarling up.
She calls in constant prayer
For time to see her duties done.
I call it the murderous ten
If she goes, it may murder me.
By Ali.A.Naqvi
When they light up the flairs
I don’t seem to watch.
I know they will flail in the air
And fall, at some distance.
Metaphors could be seen
But, it’s just a firework
Falling, that could mean
Things metaphysical,
Or it’s just ruined plastic casts
Spent to see in a future
That’s similar to the past.
By Ali.A.Naqvi
I sent you a copy of Hafez,
There was lots of Rumi on the shelf
Something of a confirmation
Of where I thought of myself
Days later, a call, a thank you,
A “thank you but”, and, silence,
Then, how things had changed
And I had not been a presence.
I said, I would reply, so I thought,
But Hafez holds my hands away
He reminds me of your broken times
Where I listened to all you had to say.
I say nothing. But take Hafez once more:
“No one, not even Hafiz, can describe with words the Great Mystery.
No one knows in which shell the priceless pearl does hide.”
By Ali.A.Naqvi
