A Winter Night
Inside my 10/12 feet mudroom
Four things vie for space─
My poplar body, mother’s spinning wheel,
Heirloom from her disappeared brother,
Old books bartered out of plastic shoes,
Blank posters pilfered from deodar poles
And a ragged mattress, an old quilt rolled
Borrowed from grandpa’s deathbed;
As the night stretches its big black arms
Like an eagle perching atop a chinar tree;
I trust my body to its vast darkness
Unfolding the mattress, over it quilt cold.
My both eyes close, only half scene follows─
The cosmic force wakes up angry in haste
Inside the room of a yawning universe
And falls down as snow on our cowshed’s
Shaky rooftop; ‘I shall break icicles’, I smile
Rubbing my eyes; the wheel stares at me
Like a dying day slipping into darkness
While two lines from an opened book read─
“Memory hangs like a wart on my face
It is visible, there cannot be an escape!”
©Ashaq Hussain Parray