Two Elderly Men On The Bench Of A Park Poem by Muhammad Shanazar

On the soggy bench of a park,
A feeble elderly man in silence,
Was looking to the sky with wide opened eyes.

His tears were losing their identity when flowed down though hair of his white beard.

The people in the park divided
In small groups were playing cards;
Some were sorting future of the world
Out of captions of the newspapers,
And some were opening the baskets
Of memories to one another,
Some were busy in singing Bhajan,
And children were making a noise
While running around.

The elderly man had with him
Only his silence,
His tears,
His loneliness,
And in emptiness of his eyes
His overspreading frozen indifference.

The man while sitting
On a bench of the park was trying
To wipe tears with tattered sleeves,
But the tears were going on gurgling
Like a stream in the days of monsoon.

The wind was titillating the trees,
Dew seemed garnishing the grass,
The passengers of clouds were arriving
And departing in the sky, a bird flew
From one tree and perched in the other,
Swarms of the butterflies
Were hovering around the flowers.
I too was observing the elderly man
Sitting silent on another bench,
I felt his tears were drenching me from my inside,
I left my bench and sat beside him.
He said to me nothing; his tears were running down incessantly,
I felt I became a part
Of his helplessness, his lonesomeness,
And after a few moments…..
In the callousness silent park
On the soggy bench
Two elderly men were weeping.