@ Have Not I Gone Worse Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Such withered face such strife of years
Is this age cruel my eyes bestow
A quarter and a decade; is it later?
We had met yesterday, today is a tomorrow.

Like from eternal sleep risen
Measure of time, and when like
From the cradle my little children
Grown to men, tell me were not you,

A master to their fate? And what hast
From the buds grown to flowers
And into the stormy winds.
Like a lily that festers, have not I gone worse?

Yet we brace the fortune in off hand,
And do you think my sweet friend
Hath the budding been good or astray,
Hath they been sculpted as you wished?

I will not repeat what we had thought
To the world they belong their wings grown,
A day without them, and a night sans
Much a done, much else remains.

To the sadness in my heart, do we?
Relive, and again the wheel of time back.
Alas! It is done. From the warm nest
Who could not let them into the freedom surpass?