We Need Not Thy Beams Poem by Showkat Ahmad Wani

We hold the countless flames within our fists,
The forges great in chests and storms in eyes,
And hills of fear in voice, with boiling air
In sighs and words of stink in tongue, and mind___
It forms the clouds and sends the storm to rise,
We eat our hearts with soup of blood and bread
Of brains with drink of tears and pour the mouths
With cries of pain and jiggle belly hard
To take in gloom and grasp at bars and poles
For legs to strike the stones in darkened rooms,
We build our nests of thought in trees of qualm,
And icy trust beneath a frozen soul,
Our fate now burns beneath the vast chinars,
The waft that stirs the buds on graves anew
And shares the scent from son's blood-covered face,
We rise with wings of fire and set to rise
Again, we burn the ice and burn the self,
We rise to shake the clouds and learn to feel
The taste of tears beneath grief's hanging boughs.
Oh sun! Thy light now stinks, thy beams are blades,
We need no light, nor yet the beams of death.
(13 Dec,2015)