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How often do we think about others? Like the love stories of birds and what our grandfathers do in the morning before we wake up. Well, we mostly think about love and grandfathers after we've lost them. There's a reason why odes are so famously featuring parents and grandparents. Here are two poems by Khatija Khan that are not only supremely diverse but heart-tinging as well.
Love Poem from a Mynah to a Parrot
The most beautiful part of this old tree,
in whose arms I reside,
is where your shadow falls
when you pass by.
Cluster green grapes on vines ripen
for worms when they hear you
chirp a sweet lie.
You steal the orange of tangerines
in jiffies to colour Ghibli goodbyes
for each sunset.
And your presence,
God! Your presence tastes like
pixie dust particles from
the fairy tale everyone chooses
over a real life.
I have fallen in love with you
like emptiness falling for space
or gunny bags falling for dust
under bogeys of abandoned express trains
or the pitter patter of raindrops
falling for rooftops of human homes
or the twentieth century poets
falling for Jane Austen's novels.
everything sober but somber.
Then, everything wild in a while.
I have started searching
for ways to tell you how much
my heart wants to jump
right within your feathers.
It is hard
because birds do not have internet connections
or self help brochures
or helpline numbers that solve
problems in no time.
So, until we manage to get WIFIs for nests,
I will pick up the hard baked part of bread
which the old woman, living some flights away,
finds hard to chew and
throws near the gutter everyday.
I'll leave it where you stay
and maybe some day
you will find the pieces of
my heart attached to it
and bring yours to me.
An Ode to Grandfathers
It is their silence that is heard
more than their words
because what else do you expect
from toothless mouths?
Occasionally, they speak too loud.
One day my grandfather said,
over the buzzing of mosquitos,
"If they can have wings and a voice,
why can't you?"
You see, when you have wings
you are seen and
when you have a voice,
you are heard.
In silence, you are punished.
until your silence becomes a parasite
and starts living in bodies of others.
Mine lives in my grandfather.
But who takes grandfathers seriously?
They search for glasses
with their glasses on.
They are too old to live in new poems
and too vulnerable to be versed.
They look for love in cupboard drawers
where they keep the picture of their wives
and hang their clothes on empty
chairs that sing the song of
their despair and afterlife.
Grandfathers learn
the meaning of tenderness
when they become children again.
They sit next to you with lips stitched,
stick lying beneath,
on days you cry silently on the stairs.
Without a word,
you hear sympathy pay its debt
and without a hug,
you find love surround you.
Who takes grandfathers seriously?
They forget the names of
the people they named.
They build the habit of
looking at wrist watches
and table clocks only when
they run out of time.
Ceiling fans are their worst enemies,
they are said to make
weak bones creak and ache.
We don't know mornings without
the sound of their stick tapping
the floor and shivering hands
opening windows,
because we never wake up
before them.
We sleep soundly leaving
it all in their numb palms
to safekeep the giant doors.
Long newspaper editorials wait
to be patiently read by grandfathers
who have no specific job.
Torches lose light only to
be charged again
after every minor inconvenience.
Silence lingers like prayers
with grandfathers around
but who worries if they have eaten
their porridge?
Because we don't eat boiled bulgur wheat
on a normal day, until there's a funeral.
Who cares if grandfathers exist
before they are dead?
And once grandfathers are dead,
the house becomes a ghost in itself.
The ceiling fans slap the wind,
the clocks tick way too loud,
the air is filled with absence
and emptiness has its belly full of sound.
The chairs remain unnoticed,
the windows, closed,
and doors wait for shivering fingers
when mornings show.
***
For the love of art,
Khatija Khan
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