We dreamt of traveling
to the city of my childhood, where lies our last morning, sighing
under the pomegranate tree. We loved the tree that witnessed
how we stitched our scented rainbows to the barrels,
how our vanished years looked east and west, north and south
from the cotton snow on the boughs, riding out in the hollow of the long night
on the saddles of our ancestors. They left the rent moon on our windows
shattered in the last siege, and we looked out
at the end of the promised night –
the night far kinder than the dawn.
Trusting, like our ancestors,
the steel of their war cry, the years sailed by on the glittering waters of Dal,
past the April bloom to mend what summer had ruined.
Mourning the stillborn silence and leafing through our futures
the songs inherited the broken rifles
and fought off the polished soldiers during the siege
of the promised night –
the night that is far kinder than the dawn
We dreamt of traveling
to the city of my childhood where lies the ledger of last summers
carved out in the pomegranate tree. We defy our ages and gaze
longingly into it to read out the rumors of our songs
sung to the whistle of ripe bullets. We loved the songs that lurked
in the April chill and warmed the ripe wounds of tulips
that withered in our windows under the last moon.
Trusting, like our ancestors,
the scent of almond bloom, they fluttered past the crimson mist,
to mend what winter had ruined. Mourning the scriptures snatched
from the dead poets, the songs inherited the broken rifles
and fought off the stalkers of the promised night –
the night far kinder than the dawn.
We dreamt of singing
in the promised night, wrapped in the wool of our summer wait,
sleeping under the pomegranate tree. We dried our old songs
on the mouth of the shallow well of our history
under the drenched footprints of the summer sun. We buried our shadows
cast under the sun and sang longingly at the tents of prophets,
long cast out from the city of my childhood. We sang
of the disgruntled apples of the south and the dead
left on the warm pavements in the north.
Trusting, like our ancestors,
the murmurs of warm autumn, the songs flew past
the testament of the flowers, and lulled us to sleep
forever in the silver cities that haunt our burnt maps. Mourning
the bitter tomorrow, torn from the throat of the summer,
the songs inherited the broken rifles,
and fought off the ash-throated raiders of the promised night –
the night far kinder than the dawn.
Image Courtesy: Canva
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.
