Now There Is Only One Regret
Now there is only one regret:
We needed no metaphors, no similes of pomegranate to
liken the wounds of our songs to.
We needed no turn on the unending road to slog on to prove
the futility of our journey nor had we even the confiscated
dust to offer and lose.
* * *
Our loss was not a row
of apple trees, blossom fingers pointing towards the direction
of our loss, nor a grove of almond trees that wept over
young cosmopolitan madness at the local hospital.
* * *
To the rain that fell on the stranger’s roof, what could
we do but stab it with the icicles of our misfortune
four times over – one each for the failed revolutions
after the guns were gunned down; end at the trail
where we began
long years ago.
* * *
Whether the sky ends,
we will blow off our lamps
and not wait for the moon to cry after hiding our shadows.
We will not slog on the road, any longer
tensed like a cocked gun waiting to wipe the scriptures of
farewell from our face. Our steps are stray bullets. Where could
we be a moment ago but here not there?
So what do you say?
* * *
I say:
Now there is only one regret:
We needed no metaphors, no poets to mourn.
* * *
Also Read: We Dreamt of Traveling to the City of My Childhood
Image Courtesy: Stock Cake
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Huzaifa Pandit teaches English Literature at an Undergraduate college in Kashmir. For his PhD he worked on establishing a comparison between Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali and Mahmoud Darwish under the rubric of 'Poetics of Resistance’ at University of Kashmir. He has contributed papers on a wide range of themes centered around Kashmir like Translation and Dissent, Masculinity and Student Activism in journals and edited volumes like Himalya, Postcolonial Literature, Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies, and Oxford Handbook of Modern Indian Literatures. He also writes poetry in English and translates poetry from Urdu and Kashmiri into English. Some of his works have found home in magazines like PaperCuts, Jaggery Lit, Outlook and Poetry at Sangam. His book of poems – Green is the Colour of Memory appeared in 2018 from Hawakal Prosthana, Kolkata.