I Woke Up Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

I woke up, with a heavy bust of marble
In my hands. My elbows tired carrying it
I can neither throw it, do away with it,
It has the weight of history, from it hangs
Chains of words, like from a warrior’s helmet.

The Time is still, -there is no Time indeed,
Perhaps, there never was a Time-Concept.
There is a vacuum; there is a frozen stream,
And sometimes, it flows back, rising upon hills,
Upon the most un-understandable conscious.

There are no dialectics, there is no otherness
There, the souls are wearing bigger chains
Than themselves, tied to heavy iron-weights,
The legs are hobbled, hands cuffed, and
Thinking is limited by rat-caps, in rat ridden hermit.

The leitmotif is a linear progression, circular
They wait, wait and wait, for none: they gaze corners
They hold dried bones, and burn seeds of unknown
Weeds, to bring them fortune.They offer
To deities, they shed blood of the animals, hunt birds.

Their women wear black, they are the patriarch’s
Devout servants. They fear hell, they strive to win
Heaven. They dream that they are falcons, and lions.
They ride bulls, with ears severed, -have been
Through hundreds of years of warfare, without winning.

Sadiqllah Khan
Islamabad
January 31,2014.

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