Voices Within: Wani Nazir

Wani Nazir, a Kashmir University Gold medalist in English Literature from Pulwama J&K India, writes poetry and prose in Urdu, Kashmiri and English. His poetry and prose has been published in a slew of National and International journals of repute. He has been receiving laurels for his beautiful writings. He was awarded with The Nissim Excellence in Writing Award 2018 for Poetry and Criticism, The Kashur Qalam Best Poet Award 2017. He is the author of a collection of poetry, "... And the Silence Whispered", the collection of poems that has been received well in the literary circles.

TEARS

Some tears never drop;

they rot in some remote corner
of the eye, 
seep down the core,

and leave a legacy
of some acrid memory,

like a frenetic clairvoyant
bequeathing the torn rags
to his progeny.

Some tears, before dropping,

whisper to one another,

and, with one accord
decide to get stockpiled
for a flood
to sweep away
the piles of memory
leaving no vestige behind,

like a prophet
bearing the prophesy
of imminent colossal deluge.

And there is always a/some tear drop,
nonpareil,
never to be compared, at all.

EXILE

Memory dusted my skin
with little of pining,
and, history
with loads of suffering.

My streams are aflow
with paroxysms
gripping my bones and marrow.

Mouth of my nights
opens up,
and, a thousand demons
prowl around to devour
green and raw dreams.

The tall pines and deodar
burgeoning on my swells
stoop down their head
in shame,
witnessing silently
the broken promises made
while the air of ambiguity
swilled through their leaves.

I am Kashmir -
an Eden whose Adam
has been long exiled
to uncertainty by earthly gods.

SCRATCH

Once upon a summer long past,
a pygmy seed was fructified

with the remnants of the memory
of my ancestors;

Memory - bitter and sweet,
inflicted a scratch on a parcel
of my courtyard,
with the incisive freight
it bore.

The seed grew into a sapling,
then into a plant
sucking in all the moisture
turbulent in the eyes
of my parents.

The last spring-a few flowers-
blossomed on the feeble stalks
filling the ambience
with an eerie smell -

smell, neither pleasant nor pungent.

In the autumn,
a seed from a withered flower
slouched down
into the scratch;

This spring,
I found me,
rising from the scratch
hoisting the memory of my ancestors
on my effete shoulders!

THE FALL

The last leaf of the tree
growing in the backyard of my home,
did fall
at the fag end of the Fall, 
way after whimpering 
a long string of lament 
over the autumnal fall 
of its predecessors.

It crept through the hole,
drilled by the incisive rays
of the summer sun,
deep inside my lungs.

The desiccated leaf,
furtively,
has clung to the walls of my lungs.

Now decomposed,
its shriveled veins
blow memories of the lament
into the veins of my body.

The tree has grown new leaves -
green,
and full of spring dreams.

But, the veins turbulent with
the bitter memory of the fallen leaf,
ooze out threnodies
through the hole -
green, and raw,

and spills them all over
the lexis of my canvas.

Voices Within Complete List of Poets :: Setu, January 2019