Dusk At The Dal Lake Poem by Uma nair

All of nine decades writ large in her wrinkles
Her mind mirrors the past unwilling to dwell
In the geography of the present
The Hazratbal haze of prayer has
Hewn its spirit of sanctity into the acrid sounds of bullets
Darkness and death and dust clamour
For their climes of catharsis
In the shades of nightfall her pashmina's greens grow gray
The strength of her marrow mumbles as the day dies
Prayers between pauses of pathos
Sighs of sorrow embraced by bleeding bullets
Hazratbal morphs into a sinewy still life
Haunted by the haloes of its carrion corpses
The minarets merely mourn as autumn drapes its disciples
In the clotted crucible of the chinar's crush
A faint freckled flush that bleaches the elegy of eerie silence
The conversations of her youth flirt in the fissures of flames
The sun has stilled her fluted heart that waits to wind around
The cemented stone of her lover as she turns to walk in beauty
Listening to the rippled laps of the Dal lake's waters
That lie limp and listless in a lifetime's lament.

2005