Poems by Dr. Jawaz Jaffri
My Organs are Reducing
My eyes’ white water
she returned to me
Wrapped in a handkerchief
This water
I’ll present to the birds
Sitting on the Western wall
O my favourite woman
There’s no hurdle between us
Except for the barbed wire
Who invents borders,
Barbed wires,
And migrations?
My Srinagar
Is fallen from the status of city
I’m surviving in a graveyard
Everyday my organs are reducing in number
I thrusted away the hand of wind
Who was standing in my side
There’s poison solved in it
For me
My land
Is a bedding of explosives!
My faces are disappearing
In the streets of city
I place my foot upon landmines
I prance ahead
I seek after the lost ones
Some bullet is in my pursuit!
My Birds have Vacated the Sky
War changed everything for me
Even my identity
My features
Are threatened by alienation
I’m standing on my land
Propped up on one leg
The other one
I bestowed to a landmine
Which was begging in the bazaar of Yemen!
I’m scavanging for my doors and walls
From the rubble
That’s scattered from Homs to Badakhshan
I have no home on earth
My identity is a refugee
I’m facing the embarrassment of empty pockets!
In Ramadi
Where there is fixed the tombstone of communal grave
Was once a city
(a city splashing with the radiance of glittering bodies)
My glowing hearth has been doused
My mother’s roti is no more available to me
I’m surviving on international charity!
My lush green fields have assumed deadly slumber
My birds have vacated their share of the sky
For drones
My friends have
Gradually gone to complete non-existence
I’m lonelier than Zahid Dar
My tongue has forgotton soundness
Upon my worn out shoulder
Is the package of forgotton features
In place of my home
There’s only left a courtyard
(without its fourwalls)
And the half burnt frock is
Hung from the clothesline in the courtyard
Whose owner is made into a slave
And led towards the human market
Of new Baghdad
Translated by Sara Ali Khan
