They form furrows tonight,
Through fractures of light
All these supplicants,
All these little eddies
Of hope and hesitation,
Crumpled little cocoons,
Hold-outs against the desolation
And yet, I’m run in to my rut.
All of us palms up and yet
I’m stunted in my song.
What now Saqi? They say
This night is line on line of love
Prayer pushing prayer
And yet, hands in my hair
I’m echoing the dull beat
Of nerves shot and fear sore
And yet, though I see her
Seventy and soaring with you
I hang behind, locked in form
Snagged by scraggs of circumstance
Rolling the possibilities in my mind
Where the should-haves and
The could-haves hurl themselves
At the walls like rocks in a tin.
So what now Saqi? The days come
Where the hang dog hunts
And howls in the holes
In our treasonous heart
And the back sways, then gives
Under the multiplicity of it all.
They say this night, the tide is strong
And it moves the universe.
So let it pull Saqi, for I am on the ebb
And know not if I can flow.
Ali.A.Naqvi