To My Own Demise

Ayub Khawar's poem

To My Own Demise

O! My demise,

Alter your route,

Dislodge yourself from my heart,

Walk alongside but be at arm’s length.

O! My demise,

I have yet to perform obligations

More significant than you are,

Which I have been sent for;

Go away to trample the desires of someone else,

For I don’t have any spare time,

Come some other day to see me,

I may approach you

Before the day you approach me,

But now leave me alone,

I don’t have any space in my heart

To accommodate you.

Leave the veins of my heart,

Walk alongside but at distance

Even away from my shadow,

Rather walk afar ahead,

At this moment of union,

Devour some other wasteland,

Beneath the roasting desert of my eyes,

There are hidden rains of thirst,

Crinkles of time,

Un-budded buds,

And unstitched dreams,

They are impatient to be molded.

In the grittiness of sand,

Potential of growing green had always been there,

Possibilities exist even now my dear,

Though you are an alternate of sustenance

A chamber of mirrors for the hearts of lovers

In the desert of pains and pangs,

You’re like a piece of melody.

But!

Look at me!

I am,

With my hands, feet,

With the branches of lashes,

Smouldering hearth of the chest,

And with the streams of breath,

Entangled futile thorns of this whore of life

Like wild vortexes.

O! My demise,

You bear with traits of terror

Between beginning and the end,

On the impression less steps of being or not being,

I have been tumbling,

Sliding, gliding and sometimes halting,

Like a shred of flesh,

Remain echoing

In the blindness of some unreflecting mirror.

At present I don’t have leisure,

My abyss is yet at distance from me.

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