To Your Dreams Xx Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

To your dreams only, return
The winds, showers are for soft green lanes.
Their holiness, and who enters it is an idol,
They are not for you.
All else is usual, all walls are intact, calm and mossed
Had you won, it would have been my winning,
But you know, the veterans when back
Are tired. They just live their personal passion.
Martyrs, you will be sung, may be?
And nothing shall be built in your memory,
Forgive us the insensitivity.

‘Once upon a time' shall be the opening line,
That you have been to the ‘capital'
On the doors of the rich, had touched
Escaping death, and to their chagrin beating
The officer in uniform. Rest you did not know.
The fiery speeches, de-void,
Might that you did not understand.
They, ‘whose tails sleep like street dogs',
Had been sleeping by the garbage bins and others
Watching the show, and sometimes ‘your eloquent eyes'.

The rebels, the patriots, the stronger and the weaklings,
All joined hands. The poet spilled the blood from heart
For you. The sarcasm, the brutality -
The power-play, the silence, long long silence
Wounds, scars, -laughters and tears-
The asphalt bed, walk on dewy grass, in front
Of the ‘revered' Parliament, big motorcades, sirens.
The emptiness shall be haunting, the tents
When removed, shall make one sing a song of loss.

They shall announce the decision,
Which means nothing to you and nothing to me either
All revolutions settle to a status quo, daunting and sad
Except that a worthwhile cause. Rendered worthless,
Not worth the effort, but since you insisted.
Since you had a dream, deep down in your bosom,
Since we are used to it. Now let us forget
Let us be to our poverty stricken homes, to our children
Knock on our broken doors, sleep long and dream again.

-To the unknown participants of Freedom march and Revolution march in Islamabad.

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
September 3,2014.