The Grey-Haired Buddha (While Reading Naseer Ahmed Nasir) Poem by Qurratulain Fatima

You are an elderly child
with the white-locks
and I happen to be
a little girl, to whom
you show the horrible scenes
of the times yet to come
and scare the Hell out of her
You cynic, with the grey-hair,
seeing me going astray
in the beauty of your words,
like a panorama of nature
you entice me
to turn over the page all suddenly
and I see, beneath those scenes
thick layers of hot molten
and lava accumulated over the centuries
When I walk over the Earth
you ask me to see underneath
where the rocks are found
licking on the mugginess drying up fast
Water vapors that went off to the sky
won't ever come back
I am a little girl, yet
my offspring
would die in the world wars
over a single drop of water

You, with the white-locks
you must be of some celestial lineage
who can look into the future
at this tender age
You write scriptures
but don't let me read any
saying, the blood of history
dribbles in them
I run away from books in fright
the terrible shrieks buried in them
appease down my hum

Sometimes I feel
as if you are
a grey-haired Buddha
who is sitting wrapped in a banyan tree
Your mellowness full of wisdom
is as thick as
the jungle of your mustaches
Your light and shade are
as pure as your verses
and over your head
there are heaps of white clouds
You must be aware
when the universe will be
rolled back into the state
of a single particle?

Death is your beloved
but I don't like her
I like to run after butterflies,
sit under the shades of the trees
you planted,
and want to see the far off rivers
walking over the trails you made
And you say,
the oceans will turn into puddles,
the butterflies and the birds
will become extinct
and the trees will turn into coal
Please, don't make me afraid!
I love the dreams of the high seas
But, reading you makes me sleepless
and the poems sleeping deep inside me
just wake up, and
I start writing!

English translation by Kamran Awan