Evening in lock-down at Pune

The dark cloud in my hand wants no more than this land that flies past in the scent of our saffron. The saffron wants no more from the passing convoys than the crushed fennel of our summer just like the poems promise when caught in the searchlights of covert operations.

The dotted butterfly that calls out to me over a phone call from my sister wants no more
from our garden than the glint of the summer moon on a rifle hung on the pear tree.
The butterfly saddles our flowers and instructs the last chag of the winter sun to
ride them into the curfews of past.

Why fear the song of the bullets? The poems assure us. It says summer comes disguised
as a mad singer who sings of yaadgar from the emptied cities and dust from
the beloved’s grave. When the war is over, the singer will play the lute of the last summer
whose blood never dried on the shirts of the recent dead. In his lute lies a fire
that will tell our ashes apart from your dust.

We don’t want to return home like the soldiers returned in the shade
of the crushed sun. Take us to the fields of the gul gulshan gulfaam left behind by the soldiers
Gather us in your hands of kaend-taar and imprison us in the hollow
of your name.

∼
yaadgar: relic/memory
gul gulshan gulfaam: flower, garden and bloom. Also a propaganda show on Kashmir aired during the 90’s by Doordarshan
kaend-taar: barbed wire.