May I Know Who You Are? Poem by Zaffar Qureshi

May I know who you are?

The sound of an untimely death,
that cannot know how to weep.
I am the smell of burning flowers,
breathing inside a necropolis.
When you hear the leaves fall,
and it's death's day after all,
you'll find me sitting under a 'Chinar',
trapped inside my grandmother's 'Pashmina' shawl,
singing to myself - "gulon mein rañg bhare bad-e-nau-bahar chale,
chale bhi aao ki gulshan ka karobar chale"
In a world of blooming flowers,
I am a genially rotting leaf.
When a seat on a bus seems obsolete,
I am your head's peculiarity.
But that's not what you want to know,
well I am a person who hugged you once,
it's strange sometimes how people grow,
and leave behind memories-
I am just one of your memory's shadow,
long forgotten and decaying in the remotest
part of your unconscious mind waiting to be
replaced by something else.