Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

My son places his paint box in front of me
and asks me to draw a bird for him.
Into the color gray I dip the brush
and draw a square with locks and bars.
Astonishment fills his eyes:
'… But this is a prison, Father,
Don't you know, how to draw a bird?'
And I tell him: 'Son, forgive me.
I've forgotten the shapes of birds.'

My son puts the drawing book in front of me
and asks me to draw a wheatstalk.
I hold the pen
and draw a gun.
My son mocks my ignorance,
demanding,
'Don't you know, Father, the difference between a
wheatstalk and a gun?'
I tell him, 'Son,
once I used to know the shapes of wheatstalks
the shape of the loaf
the shape of the rose
But in this hardened time
the trees of the forest have joined
the militia men
and the rose wears dull fatigues
In this time of armed wheatstalks
armed birds
armed culture
and armed religion

...

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.


...

I speak of you,
it feels as if I am carving open
my own heart.

You were love—
but not an answer,
a question.

Without you, this world is a desolate graveyard,
where I am both alive

...

Let all of you together find a fault with me,
at least a fault you all jointly work out,
or else, a harm shall befall you.
Let you all combine speak out why you've sent me in exile.
Say: Taslima, you're at the root of a pestilence, infant deaths
or you've committed as atrocious a crime as rape or genocide;
Say something like this, at least two or three of the stigmas to substantiate my banishment.
Until you detect a suitable blemish in me,
until you make me stand in the witness box,
to raise your accusing fingers in spiteful wrath at your black sheep,
how can you pardon yourselves?
Had you been able to say where I'm wrong,
the pangs of banishment wouldn't have engulfed me so harrowingly.
I'm eager to see you detect my wrong,
so that I can embrace you as my well-wishers.

Name my fault that made you ostracize me,
specify at least a loophole in my character.
By apportioning a blame on me,
you ensure your own acquittal.
Why should you let the history frown at you?
Why have you eclipsed the light of civilization,
by rooming with the darkness of medievalism?

Establish a cause for your action,
and if you can't,
then set me free,
not to save me,
but for your own survival.


...

A baby's cradle with no baby in it,
A baby's grave where autumn leaves drop sere;
The sweet soul gathered home to Paradise,
The body waiting here.
...

Beneath the moon my soul does weep
A vow of sorrow that I can't keep
The stars shine cold, yet never near,
They mock my cries, they scorn each tear

A hollow heart, a breaking sigh,
Each breathe a question -why? oh why?
The night is endless, dark and profound
Where hope is lost and none is found


...

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
...

A woman waits for me- she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.

Sex contains all,
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results,
promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal
milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,

...

I wandered where the grasses sway,
Where dusk invites the beasts to play.
The Serengeti, vast and wild,
Would not forgive a reckless child.

The sun had bled across the sky,
A crimson wound where light would die.
I heard the whispers, soft yet near,
The kind that stitch the air with fear.


...