My Depression Poem by Prof Niamat Ali Murtazai

A fairy imp always accompanies me
Sometimes we are one, sometimes we are three.
I, myself and he, a company of three,
Move through streets or sit under a tree.
He, a critic of my activities,
Often exposes my deficiencies.
When I go to some suburb and find plight
He claps for me, gives me a dose of delight.
But when I visit some well-off colony
He stares at me like an old loony.
He becomes stalwart and laughs at me
When I pass through a bazaar of finery.
He begins to creep like a snail in graveyard
When I come back, he gallops like a pard.
In my sitting-room, he sits between us
That is I and myself, he divides thus.
And wants the whole world like the most needy
And that's also very speedy.
He becomes my cushion when I go to sleep
And makes my dreams descend to darkness deep.
In marriage halls, he ridicules my past
And commands me to look at the world vast.
An angry companion I always keep
That often to sorrow intends to leap.
Than my own shadow, closer to me
And hits ‘myself' off like a strong tee.
I know no norms to check his brutality
So secret, so civilized, so soft cruelty.
He silently raises storms in my mind
I find nothing when nothing I find.
He corrodes my wish, aim and sound pleasure
Melancholy-drenched he leaves my humble leisure.
He turns my springs to autumns, dreary
Ah! starless become my skies starry.
My mind is his bed-room, my heart his lawn
He sleeps and strolls in them dusk or dawn.
He becomes my iron-cage with hard bars
To get rid of him, I'll have to fight wars.
He was born with me and will die with me
I am bound to him but he is ever free.
He persuades me to commit suicide
And asks me the horse-of-escape to ride.
He becomes my master, I his slave
In two-fold slavery nothing I can crave.
At last I resort to my Maker High
Towards His heaven I send my weak sigh.
Then some solace reveals on my heart, sad
Without which I was going to be mad.
My pieced-thoughts come back with patchy-peace
And I get ready to play on life crease.
I take up my tools and start my work again
For the time-being I forget torturing pain.
In this way, I move in a cyclic mood
Rude, normal. Pleasant, and then normal, rude.