To seek you (peace) is an eternal wait
As drawing streams from dreary desert
Like dredging humanity from dried seabed
Of dead consciences, reeking of death
To find you is as empty;
As promises you make in a hollow space
That lost your presence long back
From Nehruvian epoch of Socialism
Till dynamics of Hindutva today,
You seem to have been glancing
In a wistful muse
Peeping from behind Chinar trees
From gleam of Nutbrown eyes
To shimmering Dal lakes
From scented whiff of Kahwas,
To rows of wooden Shikaaras,
From young Firans to lanky Achkans
Who sought a streak of bright Sun;
To blind eyes and crevices of wombs
Which crack with every sound of gun,
Not once, you winced or shrieked aloud
At wailing mothers, mourning on dead
And gaunt faces of senile fathers;
Whose lives are dim lit
Plummeting in receding rays of sunset
You lit up the hopeless hopes
Of half widows and half mothers
Who find their accomplishments
In quest of their spouses and sons
You seem to fancy the angst of youths
Who try to grab your tentacled hooks
In unidentified cesspools of blood
In pieces of flesh, in mutilated bodies
Of toddlers, in gauged eyes of civilians and soldiers
Agonised Kashmiriyat knows you though;
You march in a Caravan of diplomats
Whose words are sugary entanglements
That bind your fleeting silhouette
To elude in a blink of a swindler’s eye.
Source