Lilting Laments In The Desert.....World Day To Combat Desertification And Drought..17th June Poem by saadat tahir

Dedicated to.....World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought..17th June


In this barren and forbidding landscape, even the perpetual denizens, the sand grains, shift and tumble, rise and know not where to fall.
They are not alone; I, too, drift in the same mysterious and stifling haze.
Trudging, groping for the unfulfilled promise of the mirage, ever near, ever so far. It would not be strange if my eyes would turn just as vacant and lifeless.
It is only the concerted thoughts of the wholeness that keep my mind from exploding into a million insignificant fragments.
But this is not all, there is more, much more!
It is you who torment me most of all.
Visions of you shimmer in a thousand places amidst the maze of fleeting reality; bits and pieces of which I gather at times.
It makes me giggle and gleam only to greedily grab for more; in the confused frenzy loosing, seemingly, more than I gained.
But you do show me, my tattered nerves, a direction.
A direction in which I must tread on limping, heaving, sweating but going on. For if there would not be the distant and melodious reverberation of your innocent laughter; I wonder how I would fare amidst the lurking shadows behind the countless dunes?
For as the day passes, the shadows grow darker, their pointed advances ripping through the fabric of my soul.
I could have been broken to bits and blown to dust had there not been a vague realization that this, too, shall pass. That, there, somewhere over the horizon the desert ends and slowly but surely blends into the green everglades where life and abundance, intertwine and knot together to whisper songs of rejuvenation into the ears of the dancing winds and then I know I shall make it
yes
I shall live

(Vintage…from files)
Written in a desolate wind swept desert in Saudi Arabia in 1992