Pushkin Café Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Spectacular poet, breezed romance,
Had we not drowned in your dreamy soul
We could have been writing tête-à-tête
A prose breaking apart, a leaf of pulp,
Or didst Tolstoy lead us to war, imagined
Or his Anna breaking her neck by train’s wheel.
‘If I have to come back, I will read war and peace’,
And the Pushkin of your fables inked
Now sits frozen as a statue, his words flow
In the marbled channels of the mind’s tress –
Live and your beauty let the world savor
Or the tongue of suffering, longing’s tall call.
Gentle Russia, Alexander Blok is your soul,
Or the voluptuous abandon of Pushkin’s verse.
There is cold autumn wind blowing outside
With it comes your name fragrant as leaf,
Cups of tea in the café, epitaphed to you
And dreamt it while ‘you’ sitting on the table.

-To the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

Sadiqullah Khan
Gilgit
September 4,2015.