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     Volume 11 |Issue 32| August 10, 2012 |


   Inside

 Inner Voices
 Eid Mubarak
 The Man who would  not Die
 The Cormorant's  Blood
 The Watchers
 Eid Mania
 Untitled Confessions
 If a Sea has Nowhere  to Go
 Ebri Mourning Visit
 Found Poem
 Planchette
 Big Brother
 Wanted
 Birangona
 Biographies

   SWM Home



Eid Mubarak

Kaiser Haq

At sixty-plus
one doesn't look forward
to festivals –
and further proof
of the inadequacies
of the pocketbook

Preferable by far
is the view
in the rearview mirror

Summertime Ramadan
when fasting was a rite of passage
sweetened by lemonade
chilled with ice
at 2 annas a seer

20-20 eyes on the lookout
for the elusive
Eid moon's
thin-lipped
seductive smile

Henna leaves
ground to a paste
and copiously applied

The bustle in the kitchen
the syrupy sweet dish
and the chicken-pilau
The early morning bathe
the new clothes
with their pleasant factory smell
and cotton wads
in the ear
soused in attar of roses

The calisthenics
of collective prayer
the criss-cross hugs
to a count of three
the coins dispensed
to chanting beggars

The cheerful visits
around the neighbourhood
and naïve delight in company –
the pretty girls prettier
the plain ones less plain
At day's end
a brazen moon
flaunts a saucy smile
a boy runs through clean air
across fields of fresh grass –

from his joyous heart
as I remember it
let me send you
through heavily polluted air
the heartiest of
greetings this Eid
though admittedly it's only
a teetotallers' carnival


 
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