Hear me: hear through the crevices of sleep—tonight?
Whatever remains of that memory—let’s keep tonight.Pray: the soldiers return galled to their cramped barns, listen: back home the snow is knee-deep tonight;
Into bristle icicles, overnight, your eyes have frozen,
on your face, the brown (skin) bids to weep tonight!Ensconced in laughter—my teeth gnaw at my tongue, the ruptured blood, in my veins, runs steep tonight;
Don’t ask me to pay homage to the death—for dead. The strife, in hurry, seeks to plagiarize my belief tonight;
What shall the fugitives ask of her browbeaten nipples,
children, in fear, suckle their mothers’ grief tonight;Whom shall it serve to pamper your memories to death?
I hear, the gravedigger, intends not to sleep tonight!Our plunderer wears the face of a long accrued habit;
who, in earnest, shall plead not to be the thief tonight?Who is bought at the shop—and in what counting sold,
thus the remains of viscid blood, who’s to keep tonight?Snowmen stand tall; oblivious of the winter they sit on.
Won’t your kneeling, countrymen, endure brief tonight?Your pair—beautiful in Kashmir too—parched—”& bright”.
Mother O—into my eyes whose tears will seep tonight?No more shall the door be opened by the dawn, no more;
be tied—to the window. Hiss: the night won’t sleep tonight.
About the author
Born in Towheed Gunj Mohalla of Baramulla, Ashfaq Saraf studied engineering. While his focus has been towards his career – the emotional pull to write never left him. Ashfaq’s first brush with poetry was during his school days when he browsed through the pages of ‘Deewan-e-Ghalib’.
The impact of Shakespeare, Keats and old hindi film songs did leave an everlasting impact on his thoughts – which accumulated in a collection of poems by him.
He is author of “The Harkening’ .