Two Poems

Poetry ~ Mohammad Zahid

1. Museum of Memories

The impressions of the glass panes
crawl across the dark floor
sunlight smells the dust settled on unchartered surfaces;
moonlight follows, licking off any trace of the evading sun
obsessed with its undying fetish to tailgate the solar star.
The cobwebs are busy with their sly lace work,
constantly closing the crevices, corners, curtains,
earning trophies for the arachnids, nursing their appetence.
The features in the photo-frames are faintly palpable.
Tightly stacked books produce heaps of silverfish droppings
of undigested words, letters, along with the punctuation.
The rare snapping sound of old furniture
cracking its joints, unwinding in a silent recoil
of ages of compression by the occupants,
rebounds from the hazy mirror.
A waft of vapour escapes like a sigh,
smelling of a youthful passion, sensuous, seductive,
now silenced to cessation.
 
There are some footprints too, saying
someone entered and broke the rule
with a sobbing soliloquy but left hurriedly
on noticing the signboard that says,
‘visitors need to settle in silence’ –
the only condition to enter
the museum of my memories.
~
 

2. The Meaning of My Silence

Don’t ever ask what my silence means.
Your questions shall fall short.
Have you ever been lost in the woods at twilight;
where the specters of tall dense pines
play hide-and-seek like the will-o’-wisps,
where even the sound of your breath is scary
and the rustle of the footsteps haunts
the heartbeats, whereby they cease for a while,
while you feel afraid of even looking back?
Such is my silence.
 
Don’t ever ask what my silence means,
you may not comprehend its shades
Have you ever drowned in the depths of the oceans;
where the hazy light slowly fades into darkness
thereafter into the abyss of unknown realms
where the shadows of monstrous creatures
glide past and witness your fall into the cavernous caves
wherein the darkness fuses with deafness
and all you see is naught?
Such is my silence.
 
Don’t ever ask what my silence means.
The sound of my silence
is a shriek that may deafen
anyone who lends an ear;
its dimensions beyond the
range of forbearance.
 
You may perhaps imagine the resignation
of the heart that carries it along, but
don’t ever ask what my silence means.
​~
​

​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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