Canonical Times Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

The desperate doors were all closed
Undulating fears hath taken over
The fingers were being puffed with,
The sooths of saying byes and hence
An erroneous curse laden with black
Soot of overwhelming sadness, eager
Eyes spilling the tear down the sulken
Cheek. The bed of rose was a thorn –
Demons from the times of dusk hath
In forebodings, offered feasts of victory.
The residual love hath a trace like beans
From the coffee cup, or cup of water
Holy and purified, and still filling heart
With hope, when stopping the hand
From the evil’s doing needed fulcrum
Of a divine power, seven thousand
And some miles away, while the sun
Was watching and the moon still smiled.
The divide was sharp, and the time
Running the gallop of a Saracen’s steed,
We thus longed and offered last libation
To the divinity of love and as if a mast
Lowered its resistance, for the winds
Were favorable, the night’s fast sleep
Deeper for now the morning‘s advent,
And she having woken up by pious angel,
For the recurring bodings, and offered,
From her generous heart, love filled
To the brim, her sadden eyes looked
Upon horizon’s read of strange doings.
Then we were in the company of airs
Of bright sun-light, the doors opened,
Walls fallen to its place, the longest
Nightmare hath the ceremonial tidings
Whilst we were hand in hand unseen,
Sewn like dolls, together and then we,
Were looking at the fallen feathers for
An absolved night’s journey, lost from
Each other’s sight and now in the dawn,
In the crowd of noisy oceanic multitude
We had an ascent to the heaven’s vaults
Of a togetherness as ethereal, sanguine,
Like the song we had begun the affair,
With the sagacity of determined swans,
To cross over and reside in miraculous
Dreams of the creation, and thus landing,
Whereupon live the suspended mist
And streams of water flow downwards
Or the falls, silent to spy upon whispers,
For love’s immense delight, the times
Canonical bearing down a weight heavy,
Like drops from the clouds who profusely
Rain on the lover’s loneliness celebrating,
A marriage, hitherto unknown, distant,
Nearer as a warm tear flowing down her
Cheek that tasted like honey on her tongue.

-On some strange happenings, which only ‘she’ knows. June 12,2015.

Sadiqullah Khan
Gilgit
June 13,2015.