At Chaayekhana Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Could you be adding more salt
The fish steak, like the two fins endlessly
Breathing suffocation. Could someone sit
Across the table to read the leathered menu
A knife stuck in fork, and on another table
The end of history so vehemently being talked.

You would bring me some more tea, flavored
From wild grass, hot in a transparent cup:
I was never spared the loneliness, a sad note
Followed me from thought to thought
Leaving, a gaze up, a stranger never to be seen
From the fall of hair, the gleaming white of eyes
It did not say anything. Demise more meaningful
Than the fables of the Persian storyteller.

A man who could not be saved by his belongings
Dearest, owned with pride; another his friend
Who drew twenty cabmen and had been
Putting under feet, the most feared dacoits, harbored
By the town. He and others, carried a body of flesh and bones
No one could rescue. We are told that for the wise
Signs to read, a petty thief, killing the proud gentleman.

There is a need to do more, the clichéd words in line
It would take the young poetess, across the rainbow
A worth, asking something for the sake of asking
Bring down, what if you have written fifty two novels
Like the novelist, who died at ninety four:
What if you are known or what you think
Is not there enough knowledge already in universe?

An easel with three legs was dancing before
My eyes, to behold, an abstract minimalist painting
Drawn, to what good reason, what motivation
Drags you to certain points? What if this, or that or none.
There is a lightness, neither alienation, nor loss
A gain, an indifference, pulling back the extended aprons
To see more closely, to feel more inside, the portrait
Of a girl that is coming up on the next book of Songs
Why, if appreciated or not, if it ever makes a sense?

Driving back home, the absurdity of living
At its peak, dead, soulless books, crepe papers –
Transporting myself to some non-existent reality, we call
Imagination. An activity, a bussi-ness, since I cannot
Believe, loss of faith, an ugly beauty, a distant life
Better wait and see, there might be a heaven after death.
Behold, be marry, be strident, and finish the last drop
Boiled from herb, unlike coffee, less ceremonial than Japanese’…

The walls were preaching, the Poet of the East’s verse
‘Rise in poverty, my way is not riches’, it connotes -
Hanging on the rich, and I requested to include
My would be book, with portrait of girl
Among the readables, for the shelf, a deceptive satisfaction
And that would cost me, eating a steak of the winged fish
And drinking tea, as if opiated, cold without tea cozy.

-Chaayekhana, an upscale tea-house in Islamabad.

Sadiqullah Khan
Islamabad
November 20,2013.

Chaayekhana @ Google