Daaniyal Hassan
At Srinagar Airport
The waiting furniture
has grown roots in the frosted floor.
The carpenter’s chisel
runs smooth blade in my palms.
Grape leaves are carved
on walnut wood.
This is the anatomy of deficient
hands without you.
From door to door of broken icicles
memory enters to leave.
The departure hinges
in my unmoved knees and arms.
What feet of steel shall carry me
away?
My footprints are decaying in
your streets.
I pack my nerves in a woolen glove
for another span
of homelessness.
The haze of the runway is
ash of departure_
for what is left after the fire of hearts?
Where we lose the land’s touch, (the earth of home)
rows of wintered skeletons
fade underneath.
There are
brown roofs of tin
rusted in the history of rains and war
everything else is a cloud.
In January
The Air flights
are canceled thrice.
Ammi says “this is how the home conspires
let it snow
six more inches,
let planes have hearts
arrested!
their fuel congealed
in plastic veins”
Let no plane fly!
Despite Ammi’s pleading prayers
the iron wings will sail unkind.
This is how the separation
conspires.
Like snow capped devotees,
carrying funeral on stolen lips
A buzz will be
soaring above glaciers,
And the dead.
How do you bury the dead
in exile?
Daaniyal Hassan is a poet based in Kashmir.