Poetry of the Old Man

Abdullah Al Mamun

1

Tonight, you who thought of the moon, a slice of scorched bread talk your curiosity into the finest café, swallow the finest food not fine enough to satiate your indigestible guilt and not fine enough to listen to the angels’ lullaby on your shoulders: “You’ve earned it, sweet child, you’ve earned it” and you know you can’t lose your composure and vomit in front of the chéri faces, and walk out to the old street of rags chilled by an arctic wind to finally throw up all over your body and on the shivering silver plate held out to you by a shameless skeleton,

you wonder, “Where has the winter fled?”

 

2

These ghosts hang upside down from the ceiling of our rooms.

They question this and that.

You must not answer;

They count the shadow a body casts,

They tally the length of night like ledgered debts,

They slip through cracks in the roof,

Dangle low, extend their hands, stroke your hair,

Like someone nearby drenched in rain

When there is no rain.

…

“On which monsoon afternoon three years ago

Did you raise your hand to clutch the bus shutter?

Why didn’t you smile that day

When autumn light fell on the roof?

That person you never retrieved,

Where do you discard their existence?”

 

3

Night slips in like ink,
through a crack in the chipped tile.
A glass left half full.

The body learning stillness after too many names

spoken without permission.

 

4

Ice-cream’ola passes by ringing his bell.
With scraps, plastic, tin, shards of iron, a torn sandal, two pennies,
and the two-storeyed young girl’s pair of eyes, they go running:
a small band of boys.

 

5

Fan spins overhead.
Blouse mended at the seam again.
Thread almost the right color.
Days without remarks.
The mirror fogs.
A name almost said, swallowed.

 

6

The silence after the train leaves is a kind of hunger.
Shirt snagged on barbed wire.
Someone, somewhere, left running.

 

7

It starts without warning.
Torrents soak the street,
flooding ankles and intentions.
A boy dances barefoot in the muddy water.
You watch from under shelter.
Then, step out.

 

8

Concrete roof. Clothesline.
Sky smeared with smoke and neon.
A child flies a kite from two buildings away.
She waves.
He doesn’t see.
She waves again.

 

9

Chiffon scarf caught in a closing gate.
Tugged loose too late.
A tear at the edge, small and certain.
Folded anyway,
placed carefully in the drawer.
Wounds best worn softly.

 

10

How the stars steal the sill tonight

and slide across your neck

as your hands, nocturnal, lean out

to reach mine with this poem pressed

between the tips of our tombs.