Empty Roads Whisper Many Stories Poem by Saadut Hussain

Empty roads whisper many stories,
Of latched windows,
Of hurriedly fastened locks,
Over dusty old footprints,
Of tiny feet racing with large ones,
In a mother’s love calling,
Of echoing names,
Of the loved and lost,
And the lost and loved.

Of rusted rolls of barbed wires,
That barricaded many fleeing dreams,
Of piercing shouts and silent prayers,
That spoke of anguish,
And beseeched of mercy,
When they drenched his lawn in red,
Of a overburdened father carrying his grief,
Desecrated and violated by the kings vampires,

Of those blinded bleeding eyes,
And of his drained drooping shoulders.
Of the old vermillion man who lived by the window,
In ornamental lattices traced in wood,
Watching shovelers and wigeons fly away a spring,
Charting courses for summers back home.
One night he too fled like the migratory mallards,
To burning summers of a moonless land.
His old roof now crumbled under heavy snow,
The latticed pane creaks lost spring notes.

Of the tyrant emperors hunting caravans,
Who stole the defenseless protestors,
And fearing the nameless in empty graves,
Then hung a noose over the bloodied meadow,
And brute silenced its whimpering souls.

Of the countless souls who gathered to speak,
Over bridges and squares,
Mustering to seek,
A right to their waters,
A stream for their fields.
And then were culled,
In streams of red.

Those abandoned empty roads,
Whisper their unforgotten stories.


~S~