3 Poems by Saba Zahoor

The Anthill of Regrets

It dawned on me like a dirt puddle
as I stood Waiting for Godot—
splashing on my foot-slogging conscience
as some reckless galaxy sped past:
I am an ant.

Not the diligent kind,
returning with day’s gleanings
to her ant hill,
but one arrested mid journey
by a single, persistent finger.
Whichever way I turn,
darting here or veering there,
the finger plants itself
a few ant-steps ahead.

This sense of being blocked
from my nebulous dreams,
has long taken root,
cracking through my will
like an invasive ivy.

Dark clouds of ennui gather
with rumors that the sun
has been stolen from the sky.

I find myself apologizing
for my childhood naïveté —
how I blocked their paths
and watched their stunned dispersals,
plucked and planted them
with their grains, at a doorway
I imagined was home.
I was building
my own anthill of regrets.

What else explains the trial,
If not some small petition
from the past
finding, at last,
its answer.


It’s not a dream anymore—

I woke from a half-spun dream,
gathered its spools from the still warm pillow,
knitting a scarf of warmth
around my cobweb wishes.

How I long to sleep
and dream again–
weave rugs of fragile tapestries,
clumsily knotting
the loose ends of my hope.

But like every dream I tried to grow,
they wilt before my eyes,
crumbling, dissolving—
a butterfly betwixt my fingers,
its wings turned to powder.

It’s not a dream anymore.


Quietus

Of all the things that have had a Fall,
it’s the rain that does not resist —
carried by whim of wind, plunging, plunging
into an unyielding abyss.
It falls; therefore it is.

He breathed in ruins and breathed out dust;
for the days offered no struggle and nights no rest.
Smoked a life, snuffed its ashes;
and let out at last his infant cry.
He stole some bread hoping for the lash,
but was instead thrown crumbs of pity at.

I sit and brood away afternoons,
writing letters to a friend
in a far-off country—
unposted,
as exile teaches.


Bionote

Saba Zahoor is an engineer, born in Kashmir and currently living in Saudi Arabia. She is a self-styled peasant poet who views poetry as a portal to alternate realities.