Parveen Shakir Poems

Will you too be like others:
put yesterday's dark against today's bright?
Well, please yourself . . . but bear in mind:
they also charge: the sun sleeps with night!
...

Midnight of my passing years . . . .
Did someone knock on the mute shutters
or was I scared in a dream?
...

Lord, I know the duty of a hostess,
but please let it be that this year
either rain clouds visit me
or my loneliness.
...

Why should I be the first to phone?
He knows too:
last night came the first monsoon.
...

My son,
this curse is your fate too.
In a fathers' world you too, one day,
must pay a heavy price
...

Instead of keeping me tucked away
in some safe corner of your heart—
instead of struggling with Victorian manners,
...

If
in the course of a conversation
gaps of silence begin to occur,
spoken words turn silent;
therefore, my eloquent friend,
...

How long did we sit engrossed in talk
under the flowering jacaranda tree?
I don't know. I only know,
the moon crept out from behind the tree
...

Listen, girl, these moments are clouds:
you let them pass and they're gone.
S o a k up the i r mo i s t t ouch. Ge t drenched.
...

I hear
butterflies will again be banished,
and bees will get pollen mailed to
them—
"They mustn't flit from rose to rose!"
...