Last Poem Of The 14th Century Poem by Iftekhar Bukhari

Last poem of the 14th century

Write this too in the new scriptures
that the last journey
was all sun and sand
there was death
in the shade of a tree
and the fruits were all full of bitter tastes

We had inherited
the thirst from the breeze
and the hunger from the soil
We used to rub the ashes
of our desolate abodes
on our facelessness
so that, some source of our identity
some reason of our existence
some justification of our being
might just arise

Do write to the times to come, that
there was stench of blood
in every page of the past stories
the lines lacked the words like fidelity
and the veracity
Write this too
that the pebbles being boiled
in the cooking pots
for the last fourteen centuries
hadn't softened a bit
Our mothers
had given birth to their babies
mummified in the terrors

Write this too in the new scriptures! !

(چودھویں صدی کی آخری نظم)
Translated by Kamran Awan.