The blue-purple sky today Has spent its moisture-ladenness It is now cloaked in quietness Its sadness it has put away In some clouded corner that Will hold it, hide it tenderly For now it wears a lighter heart Star-smeared, it now gleams Wetly with nostalgia A tender melancholia I look at it as it glimmers Stalwart in its eternalness Its timelessness, its ceaselessness I yearn for that serenity That noiselessness, that peacefulness I take in a ragged breath All my grief sits in my chest Heaving, cleaving achingly Endlessly, relentlessly I look at the resolute sky At its crush of dewy stars Valiantly twinkling at me And I look away Tonight I don’t feel brave enough To let the shimmering cloak of night Take me into its embrace Away, away from my sad place. It moved its glutted grief today The sorrowing, water-laden sky And I have in my wretchedness Made it my own this starry night.
Autumn’s here, the leaves they fall As they do when summer drifts away Slowly leaf by leaf, butterflies and bees All whisk away to other places where nippy winds Frost-nibbled grass and bare trees Have had their day. They change places For a spell, the cities wear new faces Borrowed for a while They smile, they sleep, they laugh, they dream Hand in hand with the people passing by
Autumn’s here, the leaves should fall As they do when summer slips away But the seasons can’t find their way Into this city, its leaves, butterflies and bees Have ceased to be. Permanently. Their carcasses one With those of their humans that once Lived in this place. They can’t change places Even for a while They cannot sit and weep and weep and weep Where mothers are slain and children are left to die.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 