The Moon Dream

Poetry
Mohammad Zahid

​The moon stares
over the cold mountains 
and the dying dusk
in the background.
The leafless skeletons
of chinar trees
haunt the grey sky
like ghosts
in search of lost souls,
when the wind makes
a moaning sound
and sleepless dreams
wander, looking for
​interpretations…
 
There are no stars tonight,
the clouds look like phantoms,
amoebae shaped,
much like these dreams
of molten terracotta; fluidic.
​
Far below on the earth,
young children
point their fingers at the moon,
​asking for it.
The grownups fret and fume
at these childish squabbles;
the children fall asleep
with smiles on their faces.
 
They dream of a madman
breaking the moon
into a thousand quicksilver balls
on the surface of water in his bowl.
 
  

​Mohammed Zahid’s first collection of poems is  The Pheromone Trail, (Cyberwit, 2013). He has read his poems at Guntur International Poetry Festival 2012, and Hyderabad Literary Festivals (2010, 2013). He is featured in TIMESCAPES, a poetry collection of 22 Indian poets, by Unisun Publications and Reliance Timeout.
His poetry has appeared in peer reviewed journals like The Four Quarters Magazine, Maulana Azad Journal of English Language & Literature of MANUU Hyderabad, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, and Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis. He won the Unisun Publications Reliance Timeout Poetry award in 2010 for his poem Amante Egare.
His own poems in English language and poetry translations from Kashmiri and Urdu feature in Sheeraza, a journal from Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, Srinagar, Kashmir. A major translation work by him on the criticism of Kashmiri poetry is being published shortly by the academy.  
He is a Translation Editor of Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts.

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