Every time it gets harder

Seeing the son of my mother

And her daughter, and

My motionless father

On the shoulders

Of my brother

                                                           

The circles of grief, I saw,

Arrests humanity

Evoking gore dances of victory

Over dumb, deaf, and blind

Whirling down

The entire humankind

                                     

From the mount Simthan*

The perfect landscape of the vale

Seems to expire

And escape

The gorgeous reality

Of beauty, life, hope, survival, and death

                                     

The truths of my Kashmir

Lie in the lies of the fraught.

Red walnuts and black apples

My only surviving cousin bought

From a quiet market in Brinty*

Where my brothers once fought

                                     

The unseen friends

And the invisible enemies

Are concealed aspirations and threats

Wandering like a painful disease

Piercing deep into the layers

Of ignored emotions in the toxic breeze

                                     

A child with red cheeks,

Passionate smile and faintly wet eyes

Standing firm

Against the true lies

That her father is alive.

Oh, the deceitful blessing and honest disguise

                                     

The unfinished sketches in my old notebook

Rekindles a faith to see me

In the lap of my dear mother

My dear father’s wife.

Her heart was cut

By a camouflaged, veiled knife

                                     

(*Simthan – A famous mount top in South Kashmir)

(*Brinty – A hamlet close to Islamabad town in south Kashmir)

                 

~Tawseef Majeed

Kashmir, India