Abandonment 

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.

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