The Market Stall

(seventh moment)


He looked over the junk table,

Expert eyes that built towns,

Expert eyes that marked buttress and gable

Not seeing just looking over.

He shifted his feet, picked a device

"How much?"

"Why ask ? You can’t pay the price."

He looks over the table still.

In the old days he was a picture

Black haired hazel eyed wonder

That soothed the ears of many hopes

Pride of breeding and virtue.

The tatty wind warmer hides

The spine bend of the man once here

The great weir worn from the tides

In the spit drizzle of the October sheer.


On reflection.

I'm sorry father, that when you were alone

I could not be there to stop the joy slipping

Like your seemingly solid soul

That winter took away from me

I'm sorry I did not forget my anger

And you fell, without your hands

Without your purpose

Aimless to yourself, useless to others.

I'm sorry father, come back to me,

Let me hear your laughter again

Fuzzy and bright in African grasses

Let me pass some warmth into your bones.

By Ali. A. Naqvi



Note: This was originally written a long time ago which would place it around the turn of the millennium as far as i can remember. This means it's about 7 years to 8 years earlier than the rest of the work in the cycle.

The second part which starts "on reflection" feels like a key change in the poem. I did that simply becuase, at the time, my father was ill and it was how I felt. I have noticed some of the sentiments could have been repeated after he passed away. This duality made me include the whole poem in the Twelve Moments cycle.

Calling

(sixth moment)

He marked. “You stop to breathe here”

Line. “You hold the note here.”

Dot. “You break this lyric here.”

Again. “You raise your voice here.”

He was teaching me The Poetry

The deep heart rote rhyme

Of soul running, of love, of rhythm,

Of divining dreams out of time.

In the mosque that night

I read but he said nothing

One of the believers said

“The line keeps going.”

By Ali A. Naqvi

Moved

(fifth moment)

We stood outside knocking and knocking

He saw both of us and opened

He stumbled out of the house dazed.

Then saw the truck full of what ever we had

He still didn’t understand

So I made him, wordlessly

Picking up the damaged

Little chairs as I walked in.


By Ali A. Naqvi

Walking

(fourth moment)

He was powering down the green banks

The Strid mashing itself white on his right

My backpack in one arm

Then he stopped to look back

As I scrambled down, creaking,

Relieved that the walk would now be flat

He looked up the hills,

Children of the crags he had climbed in Quetta

Something in my hurt little city lungs

And my plump rib cage had no master

So I found a rock and slumped on to it

He watched then said “Good boy. Let’s go”

By Ali. A. Naqvi

The Present

(third moment)

We didn’t have a chimney.

It presented a problem.

I wanted a chimney

To prove the con was on.

They said to me Santa would come

Down the chimney,

Of course they were lying

There was no santa even if there was a chimney

I was sitting in the lounge

And told my father about the chimney

“There won’t be a santa , because there isn’t one”

Council houses, I knew, had no chimney.

Boring fables on TV

And Christmas came with its glitter

At least there were the cartoons

Dad tapped me. “You have a present. Go see.”

In our beaten up little flat

On the mat of the corridor

A parcel, too big for the letter box

Leaned up on the white door

Twenty years later I bought him a hat

Put it on his head and beamed

His white beard gleaming away

He was still Santa Claus after all.

By Ali. A. Naqvi

The Return

(second moment)


It was one long year.

Started with classes on Englishness

In a city crumbling

As it suffered an era changing

We were like a rickshaw

Mother pulling

Me the wheels

Sometimes remembering

It was the year after

The magic days of gardens

Snakes , Bemba and song

Taken away by one long plane ride

It was the year waiting

Because I wasn’t fatherless

Like those in the hostel

Or those at the agency

And when he finally came

The Molana looked at me

“See that light? It wasn’t there before”

And my father smiled and lifted.

by Ali. A. Naqvi