In
your final rest
on
a rope-cot
were
you still dreaming
of
a piece of bread?
Beloved
one,
we
the people
of
this country
of
that country
can
make anything
but
a piece of bread
for
you –
*
Your
death now
is
dream-forgotten.
Stingy
dream, secret,
yesterday,
the day
before,
or early dawn
of
some endless night,
snatched
from
a
broken sleep
like
a cut thread
(Says Amma: don’t
forget the early
dawn dreams as they
might become real)
*
One
festival
of
breads
you
drank the last drop
of
sweet kheer
at
my home,
sweet
kheer slipped
into
your beard –
een
*
So
said the Prophet:
“All
my dreams
are
inevitable
truths”
and
squeezed his body
into
a qibla
and
swallowed the poison
in
Fatima’s womb
and
then slipped away
into
his dream
that
was like knowing –
Then
what was left?
One
Karbala
bodies
piled on bodies.
And
from her birth pangs
from
her broken sleep
Fatima
began to broom the hurt field
with
her braid.
*
When
you poured your pain
into
your pipe of shehnai –
did
I ever tell you
all
my history is a broken sleep
a
shattered
genderless
dream that multiplies –
*
Your
dream of bread
is
not far from her battlefield
anymore.
Your
body at last on the rope-cot,
the
last pinning glance of the war –
they
are the same dream
one
restlessness, one violent shriek
this
is what
I
am now
*
When
you left,
the
shehnai turned alone
into
her dark corner
and
sang to herself
beating
and beating
the
ceaseless tune
of
the dream you left
orphaned
–
(Translated by the poet with Shamala Gallagher)
*
