| |
1. Neelum Valley
Days it took
Down slopes, goat-tracks, gullies.
Of resting
Under autumn sky, leaf-less trees, by boulders.
Days with no food.
Water only from the mountain springs.
For days
I carried her
On my hands like an offering
With others bearing their wounded
Bruised, scarred, of broken limbs
On string cots, cotton-sheet stretchers.
The village collapsed on itself
Like steam-puffed chapatti off the griddle.
My mother’s shawl bright
With flowers of summer pastures
Was dust-soiled, torn, like her.
We buried the dead.
At the edge of the cornfield
There were so many.
Rows of grown-ups, children.
All linked by blood
Or terraced fields
Our ploughs had shared.
Down, above the river
The dirt-road had cracked
Like an over-ripe melon.
Rocks blocked
This life-line on the skin of slopes.
Mountains made new slants over village after village.
We reach town.
The hospital, all we see
Fallen down.
Doctors in tents.
Here our own desolation
Many, many times is multiplied.
2. Balakot
Houses here.
Shops selling pencils and copies and books and sweets there.
An ironmonger, a shop of house-things
And atta and oil and lentils
And tea-packets strung like pennants here.
And my school there.
A road from here
Over the bridge, over the icy river
To the forest and mountains there.
There was all this.
And people.
The bazaar is gone.
The houses, road, bridge, many people, my school, gone.
My friends’ voices gone
Under the rubble like their bodies.
Some found. Twisted.
Dust covering them like shrouds.
Others they searched for.
With iron rods and pick-axes and spades,
Bare hands. Searched day after long day
Among the debris and books and open satchels
For one, anyone, who may still be there.
3. Muzaffarabad
Giving always
To ploughshare tilt
Through seasonal sprouting
Perennial plenty, bearing branches
In cultivated order or nature’s own way. This land.
With a shiver
The earth’s dark design
Pushed the present into the past.
This is how the land can speak
A land pushing against itself.
Snows have come to mountains
Whitewashing pastures and pines
Denuding the late-fruit trees.
The wind carries seeping chill
To where we now stand, sit, sleep.
Not beyond measure
Yet all must submit to it.
And attend in the placid afternoon
To the slow, long aftermath.
And begin again.
|
|
|
