Poems forever

There will come soft rain

By Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Farewell

By Anum Khan

If we had said good bye

When I was leaving you,

I’m certain the enterprise

of breath would have lost use.

If I had delved

Into that place

Which none but you could see,

My naked self,

Stripped of all grace,

Would have bawled endlessly.

If you had clutched

My hand even

A moment more, my dear,

It would have crushed

all resistance

As nudged leaps vanquish fears.

So, instead of

Crumbling, I chose

A smile as my farewell.

But know this, love

Quickly, I strode,

Losing grip on mask I held.

Memoir of want

By Zahra Zafar

There are myriad things

You can dream, want and need

But in this lonely universe of uncertainty

In this gloomy state of existence

I want sirens to sing for me

With their enchanting voices

And lure me into their bewitched fantasy

Like Pablo, I want spiders to weave me a star

With spinning gold silk and shimmering glow

So I won’t burn my hands

While trying to hold it

I want clouds to grieve with me

For the things I never had and never will

Changing their colours

From snowy white to midnight black

I want the ocean to wipe

My every trail

With its angry waves

Like I haven’t spent long nights

Searching for the moon through its mirror

I want hamerkop to build me a home

Adorning it with incandescent light of hope

So I will never get lost finding my way back to it

I want …

I want…

I want….

Betrayed

By Sidra Amin

I was called upon by a voice,

And shaken up by tremors,

The voices began to rise,

I quivered and tried to hold on,

But gone were friends and family,

The worldly relations I relied upon.

There came an imposing figure,

With a list of deeds I’d done,

Read them out to me like a story

Of self-forgetfulness, in the greed of love.

I was asked if I would accept,

The choice to go back and repent,

Or would I take the path,

That I walked on, before.

I was naive and chose the passage,

Where I thought beloved would be,

Never knew I’d find out,

On my dreams, they’ll tread,

to a world that I rejected,

And left me dejected.

There’s nothing I can do,

For my deeds, I’ve been sued.

Compiled by SK