For Mnemosyne

Poem IFootnote to Childhood in Parenthesis1.Ants share my griefcrawling out of the crumbling anthillthey nibble sadness off my nails..2.( )3."Hukus Bukus Teli Van Tche Kus"(Who's He and Who am I, then tell me Who are You?)Perhaps father had found out that I sit in the closet,doors shut amid dark quietitude of hanging clothes.Reading darkness in Braille. Seeking home in shameof fallen hems and seams. Untying dampened memoryof fall tangled in crumples. Baring the remains offorgotten dusks and forest fogs in gasping folds.Learning by heart lingering whiffs ofcamphor, pine, labour, summer rain, soap.Subtle scents of loss. Clinking sound ofempty hangers..Crouched like a soldier in a trench I would rubmy numb feet to life. Search for forgotten coinsin the sombre winter coats. Clench my teethto keep them from chattering. Kindle primevallittle sparks from the static in my woollens.Exorcise myself from ghosts of oblivion..Perhaps father saw me talking to the windowand my berry-stained palms..He shuddered a littlewatching me listen to whimpers of the wheel barrowstanding alone in rain. Nursing a shrivelled cacti.Sobbing at the sight of crushed fallen figsshining like graves at Eidgah in afternoon light..He patiently witnessed me gazing at the skyfor too long. Halting suddenly after an endlesswhirl to see world tremble, for few moments,in a blurry slow motion..Maybe he realised too soon the weight ofgardener's dream. My macabre interpretations.Perhaps that's why he told me a storyabout ants and their persistence..Sitting on the back porch facing the wallhe recounted the tired warrior watching intentlyan ant carry a big grain of rice on its back.My gaze fixed on the little hole in his socksas the ant in his story kept falling and rising..He didn't tell me, but the lesson from that story,I later learnt in the moral science book at school,was "try try try again".4..Living is not synonymous with Existinglike Death is not a synonym of End.Have we lost the will to live?.5..When siege shattered togetherness andshards bled our feet, father taught methe spelling of so-li-lo-quy..When the pomegranate tree in the gardenforgot how to blossom and love became moth-eaten,he knotted my hair ribbons into butterflies for themorning choir at school..As windows became walls and death epidemiche moulded clay to teach me worldin his veinous hands. Ephemeral insectsgathered around our feetto sing with us their farewell song—the anthem of creation and destruction..When winds rocked our cradle in lacerated nightshe sang us a lullaby, a song from a 1947 film—"hum dard ka afsana duniya ko suna denge"(the song of sorrow, we shall sing to the world),transforming his eyes to promiseshealing gashes to poems.Father taught me tostack away the remnants of broken thingsThat's what dreamers do, he would say..6.Family portrait as a muddled memory of mundane—.Smell of steam from the ironloiters around the room. Father issmoothening the creases of ourclothes. Mother is standing,like a sailor, near the whistling cooker.Brothers search the colourfulworld encyclopaedia for tracesof our gray lives. And I rummage throughmy pockets full of debris of broken things..Outside, light walks up to the gallows.Sky turns to an obscure shadeof gray and black. Suddenly.Old men dig a child's grave.Again a bullet pierces a heart.Language bleeds. Rains falls asa stutter on the dead child's face.Mourners whirl..7..I hear the faded echoes of myhasty childhood(atishoo atishoo we all fall down)as I march like ants,further down life's road..falling, risingcomforting myself: try try try again.— For Baba, the chronicler of my dreams.***.Poem IIRoom without a window.Tucked in white sheets of delirium I pop medicinesreceding further from life in my room with no window.fluorescent lights pierce my eyesI desire incandesce of fragile tungsten filaments.In my half-dream I am certain it is not waterdripping from the clothesline –.like stoic clockworkthrobbing an end.but winter rain falling on potter's clayand cobbler's anvil.On shepherd's shouldersand farmer's face.In my head, I kill them one by oneAll keepers of love must die, I tell myself.and recall the quiver in my grandmother's prayer:ease my journeysin this world and hereafterof this world and hereafter.I think of many windows of homeand shut them all in my eyes***.My medicine-dream:.Hundreds of slippers left behind by dead mournersin the city of seven bridges.Pomegranates in the backyardtheir hearts ripped.Museum of dead butterfliesgalaxy of wounds.A shroud stacked together with her trousseau,casually.Rain-speckled paper boatsmy tea, cold, on the window sill.Shape of the dark on cold winter eveningsvisions of debris interrupted by cacophony of crows.Long-distance ring of an old static telephoneechoing through the hallway.Bridge near the cemetery where I buried a dead waspflowing Jhelum, my abandonment, and endless rowing.Afternoon radio which could read hearts—wal waes gasvai aabas; duniya chu nendari ta khwaabas(Oh friend, let us go draw water; world is lost in a dreamy slumber).Cherries dangling from her earsWinds tearing apart bright kites.Colour broadcast of bombed cities and dead childrengrim stillness broken by the clatter of cutlery over a hurried meal.Smell of winter and orangesmemory of a funeral.Hushed laughter amidstmilitary blackouts.***.Pronouncement of a single declaration—the world is ending, everybody's cryevery day.We grew up embracing the dying world,yearning for finality. But nobody told usmemory is made of forgetting too..End will not arrive for it livesinside us. We must look for itand begin afresh.***.I float free in womb of time – amnesic closureI am certain for once, rain heals as it fall.~ Uzma Falak is a native of Kashmir. Her narratives and essays have been published in the Caravan, Jadaliyya, Of Occupation and Resistance (Westland/Tranquebar, 2013), Paper Txt Messages from Kashmir and others. Integrating creative practice and research, she is currently pursuing her practice-based PhD in New Delhi. She also blogs for Oxford-based New Internationalist.