The Shroud of Spring
Spring finds Kabul
Almond trees tender in their bloom
Shy white buds lean against the tempering sunlight
Dawn wakes with calls of the muezzin.
It is a dark dawn, this spring.
The prayers chant in deep throes of anguish
and despair.
Like black velvet, casting a shroud
Over unwilling women, by unyielding men.
Shackled into homes,
Cows in the cowshed.
Relentless quagmire of hollow routines
Battles fought yet now exhausted -of possibilities, of dreams and of hope.
Invisible; Forgotten; Manipulated; Unchosen.
This certain fate.
She demands of me- ‘is there a red line?’
‘When will you say enough?”
Is her absolute erasure, the price for my courage?
In this theatre of unending compromises
I quarrel myself.
There is no rescue, only shame.
Witness -
to what I condemn.
Yet do not disown
this new Abyss.
