They Call Me Kashmir! Poem by Aadil Hingorjo

Locked in the lone lanes
Sitting at crossroads
I wonder is this my world!
Looking at my scratches
Crushed cores of my land
Kashmir, they call me,
I'm crunched into crushes!

As if I'm some commercial piece
Like some property with no reality
Nuclear lords from all sides suck me out
The blue sky embodies my story
The stillness of earth knows it well
Barren bazaars, deserted domains
Kashmir is my name; I'm all alone!

Left in a room with no window
Widow too has someone to look after
My tongue's cut down
My beauty is brutally raped
Pains entail me; I'm an endless cave
Cornered to my creepy corridors
Numbness of a hell-long night!

Sunken streams of mine
Desolate days rise and fall
No arrival, no revival
Horrible dreams drain all the way
No rain, only ruins, artifical rainbows
In wounded ways, I inhale
Demolished to the depths

Utterly incomplete I stand
A word pregnant with wounds
An overtly unread book
Breaking down to several cells
Searching for humane hymn
Seeking out some sympathetic sign
Fooled from every side; mistreated!

An unfortunate piece of art
Artist perhaps has turned off
Or maybe he has gone dead
Deafs, dumbs, and blinds lip-serve to me
Occupied by the unkind edges
Planted to extreme pettiness
I am an unaddressed ash!
With a pretty sad smile, I survive
At the lynching line, I resist
My people struggle to imprint
Imprint my melancholic meadows
Meadows lost into the unending choas
Reflecting the inmost resonances
I exist to translate my times
My time's frozen
Yet I must rescue my wreckage
I mustn't go tired
With every leaf, I must live
For the sake of upcoming spring
Ah,
I'm Kashmir!
-
Aadil