Gold Wash Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

They collect gold wash, they are ants
Bigger than a fox, smaller than a dog
Sage, thou art Herodotus, by name -
Who hath said so of Indus, years ago,
But what I hath seen, a tented wreched
-ness, a cold river ebbed by witches
Of stark nights, dark skies and starried
Day. O mornings, the red of the ward-
Robe, spread against the cruelty of stones,
We inherited weighty masses, carried
By our rough hands, either making great-
Walls, or encircling dried river beds frozen
Into trout's skeleton. Some cub of a lion
May fall down the stream, a wolf, leave
Her skin or a goat is slaughtered into it.
I might wish, for the sake of loneliness
On the spread colors, you might be dream
-ing, of the distant roars of breaking hills,
Nature slipping into the ravines of cold
Waters, draining a glacier of hundred miles,
You may shift to better harvests, across
Another valley, where the day is half or
Fourth, and the night is longer so longer,
That no footsteps are heard, after making
Love, and no dip is needed because morning
Is frozen and we shall cross avoiding a curse,
Or hang down the river, with nuggets of gold.
They say, there they make mountains of it,
Women wear it, men cherish it, it is studded
From the brethren collected gems, raining,
Like an ibex, mounting sending down, chip
-ped stones, scratched by hands, made
Prismatic. We shall talk later on, but
Nothing shines more against human skin
Than dust of gold, and pearled gems of stone.

Sadiqullah Khan
Gilgit
October 31,2014.