Glacier Melts Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Mine is a repository, swallowing the night,
Dark brazen and like a dove’s wing
Flutter to loosen the thread of time
Glacier at Rama melts, the east ridge trek,
On the Nanga Parbat from the day’s
Un-dusted voluminous presence and roads
Up-leading broken and watered like fields.
The shiny eyes of the boy is to learn
Swimming in hopes, and the absence
Of colors from the feet of inhabitants of valley,
Of lately I knew they have little stories
Littered in boxes of wooden rooms,
Still empty for the hibernation of severity
But the goose tail like sun-rays depending,
And sadness written on every face,
Like sheepskins in whose bowels is skimmed,
Yak’s milk, and they had earth mashed
Upon their heads, without vegetative color,
And they said they do not make camel-wool
Caps, or catch ducks to tuck their feathers in.

-On a visit to Rama Lake, Astore.

Sadiqullah Khan
Gilgit
August 18,2015.