Fifteen Shabaan

They form furrows tonight,

Through fractures of light

All these supplicants,

All these little eddies

Of hope and hesitation,

Crumpled little cocoons,

Hold-outs against the desolation

And yet, I’m run in to my rut.

All of us palms up and yet

I’m stunted in my song.

What now Saqi? They say

This night is line on line of love

Prayer pushing prayer

And yet, hands in my hair

I’m echoing the dull beat

Of nerves shot and fear sore

And yet, though I see her

Seventy and soaring with you

I hang behind, locked in form

Snagged by scraggs of circumstance

Rolling the possibilities in my mind

Where the should-haves and

The could-haves hurl themselves

At the walls like rocks in a tin.

So what now Saqi? The days come

Where the hang dog hunts

And howls in the holes

In our treasonous heart

And the back sways, then gives

Under the multiplicity of it all.

They say this night, the tide is strong

And it moves the universe.

So let it pull Saqi, for I am on the ebb

And know not if I can flow.

By

Ali.A.Naqvi

The Fade

I'm watching for the Fade,

Or the soft leaving; possible causes

For slow smiles delayed

The absent nods and pauses.

Noting possible lags and gaps

In her round robin stories,

Her head-scratch to fill the lapse

In her long wrung memories

I'm watching for the Fade

The sputtering in her fission,

Knees resisting but mind obeyed,

And the slow, long evocation

That she adds to the "La Illah..."*

That she sculpts with hefted hand

That she charges the "...ilallah"**

To flow her faith to me as I stand 

I'm watching for the Fade,

Adding things to my observations

Like cups not washed, bed unmade

The welts of age, the mild confusion,

The siege of pill after alabaster pill,

The half second more in opening doors,

And the disconnect between force and will;

All these ebb and erode to my core.

I am watching her fade, Saqi, and all the things I was with her.

by Ali.A.Naqvi

Notes * & **In Islam the call to prayer has the words "La Illah illalah"- "There is no God but God"

This poem is contemplation on foreseeing the loss.of someone you love to age

Beyond

These folds of

Up and down

Of past and present

Of left and right

Are your vessel

Moored here

In what you touch

And what you see.

You pull at oars

But lose the tide

You hold out hands

But not your cup

Listen to Sadiq

Sing “Mustt, dam mustt”

Seeing beyond the cup

He sees Kauthar

Beyond the sea

He senses the ocean

We hear watches

He hears the Saqi

And the voice

That said “Be.”

Ali A. Naqvi

Certitude

I want that day, that unexpected night,

I felt certitude wiring the spine straight

As the Architect slotted all into place

And the Ravi* pooled peace into my fate.

For bending boughs and the heaving roses

Were too much for this realist.

But, Saqi, though I parched my words,

Kept my rhyme dry, ran rhythm with grit

The Planner split my rhetoric, left

My logic limp and excuses spent

So sought, so gave me my other half.

So follows Qamr where Shams went**.

by Ali Naqvi

Notes: 

*Ravi is a river in Punjab, which runs through Lahore.

** Qamr is the moon in arabic. Shams the Sun. Shams -e - Tabrizi was also the scholar and mystic who was Jallaludin Rumi's greatest friend.

Also The Planner and The Architect refer to aspects of God.

Of An Old Hurt.

I stood; a bit too quick.

Pain lanced through.

She saw the slight tick.

A hint of worry, I knew.

The wrench leaves marks,

Though I stood braced

Biting down the spasm’s arch

Setting a square face.

She carries prophesy enough to see.

She has wirespools enough of memory.

I will not add to these even if she had wanted.

We live better for things unsaid.

By Ali.A.Naqvi

Habits

“When I go, you’ll remember these things.”

She’s laughing now, at me,

As I did, in response to her fuss,

But that line is lingering now

While she potters about, in her way.

I watch, knowing I will remember these things

When I try to pull her presence

Out of the colours around me.

No one can build me up

Because she’s done that, always.

But I’ll be like the hulked up tower

Looming into the dour night

Crumbling and caving to the rot

When she’s no long there

To hold up the walls.

By Ali. A. Naqvi

Ten

She calls it the murderous ten,

The years from sixty to seventy

When her friends begin to fall

And she feels herself gnarling up.

She calls in constant prayer

For time to see her duties done.

I call it the murderous ten

If she goes, it may murder me.

By Ali.A.Naqvi