For Mazhar Mehdi, Poet   (d. 2009)

 

 

No poems    No words

No feeling

Nothing

Emotions caught in webs of philosophy

Within my bowels seep poisons to kill poison

A maelstorm of medicines

In a hospital white-clad men

                        walk around me

Pain floods in

Every nerve pulls every minute

Breaths are screams

The entire body trembles

2009

for thousands of years has genuflected

                        at the threshold of touch

Prayers on my lips

My fingertips itch

Stuck in my body

are bottles

Red – White

Light

What is this cure

That makes hands raised in prayer

tremble

My tongue a bed of nails

cuts into my conscience

In a white room   Clad in pure white

Amid clean, transparent mirrors I lie

Every emotion got buried in those mirrors within mirrors

 

                                                                        -- © Jameela ‘Nishat’

                                                                        (trans. Hoshang Merchant)