Dear mother,
I won't ask how are you, as I remember how you would be at times when I was away from you for a day, for an hour, even for a minute. And now when I am gone for never to return, I do know how you would be feeling. I know you still would be closing your eyes and waiting for this nightmare to end, waiting for this moment to pass by, waiting for me to come running into home and hug you, waiting for the sound of my foot-steps to reach you, waiting for my voice to call you...

 

The day had gone well with no regrets, no complaints but a thanks to the Almighty for having given the day. She was often on my mind but her thoughts didn't disturb me. I carried on with my transactions and bidding without being much influenced by the occupied mind. A smile was what I greeted the people I had met in the day with. I had helped a blind man cross a much-busy road and he returned this gesture with a smile. I had also smiled at a specially-abled (disabled, what this cruel...

Night and day,
As i play
On your hands; between the fingers,
I cease to be a subject,
As i no more belong to a sect;
Strange though,
As underneath the night's clever sky i sow
words painted with a tacit glow,
I see my chosen paper crumbs sink,
in the bloated flow of my impertinent ink;
I see my fingers trail,
behind the pace of my eyes frail,
And i see my rhyme turned to twigs,
(for its all pervasiveness)
Those twigs burned to ashes; hence
I see a house made of clay
Under the torments of a...

This fall mother,
The wounds have not been retraced.
They have let the curtain remain, and further
to the astonishment of my half-fed limbs,
They have spoken in whispers
(to their shameful eyes)
and in words tantamount to treachery.
This fall mother,
Our Chinar was not burnt alongside roadside litter,
and the torn robe, this fall, apparently, was not HER.
This fall our language reclined numb,
Our words were corroded and their meanings dumb.
This fall mother,
We did not plead,
We did not ask...

The book was first published in 1981. It opens with a short ‘Printer’s Note’’ by noted Kashmiri scholar M.Y. Taing. He writes, “Sheikh Noor-Ud-Din’s was an era of intense cultural clash. Islam had won its political victory but it had yet to overcome the spiritual and cultural resistance of Native streams. Its task was not made easy by the preachers of the new gospel, who came from alien lands and tried to bask in the sunshine of swords, out-sheathed by the Muslim victors of the...

Just sitting still, gazing at the sky;
endless I can see, above the cloud so high;
People mocking me, I look them with a sigh;
The world cannot understand me, neither do I.

My life as I live it, you can never feel;
This is something that you can never steal;
I have scars, I guess they will heal;what ?
You don't believe me, I heard a peal.

A hush fell over the crowd, what's happening with this town;
I am going to the edge of the cliff, building wings on my way down;
I have kept my fingers...

Ours is largely a trash age and literature and especially poetry has been so massively trivialized that most of the poets today have become disgraceful wah wah party whom few read and still fewer appreciate.

However some poets declare their genius nonetheless and it is pleasure to read them. Crescendo is a translation by Abid Ahmad, of the select poems of Sheikh Khalid Karrar, a promising Urdu poet from Jammu and it is good fortune of a poet if he gets an able translator. I was...

You left temples godless behind
on their own, concerned.
You took away deities asleep,
draped in silk soaked with tears
and left behind angels weep.

Hushed I kept listening you leave
in nights cursed, drop by drop, 
untold; through the frozen mountains 
unable to speak.

You left uttering wail and a spell behind.

Distances prohibit me,
I seek forgiveness;
Unable to reach you,
I know not will you forgive me.

Shackled I couldn’t guard what was left behind.

Peregrinations washed your...