MY SOMBER BURROW
 Author: SOHEL KARIM


	From my somber burrow
	I look outward
	Toward the sky
	Toward the flailing ocean
	The quivering wave froths 
	Spout over my yellow window
	Repeatedly, a thousand times.

	The meaning of time,
	Rythmic drumbeat of nature,
	Is different in my burrow;
	Time floats in the stale air
	Like a charmless vulture
	Harmonious with my emptiness.

	 I look outside
	To see the nuptial fondness of clouds
	Infinite giggling of wind
	And the ravenous haughtiness of endless sea.

	Sweet and  bitter tenacious memories
	Shower me with their pleasant touch,
	Lift me from my darkened burrow
And fly me over the rapacious ocean,
Across icy cordillera, broken escarpment
Bay of Bengal and forgotten graveyards.

Slowly, I begin to see faces
The faces moistened with love
Embrace me with sheer smile of permanence,
Devoid of triumphant hatred.

I touch those heavenly faces
With my dried bare hands,
I feel warmth, tenuously tangible
Flowing through the arterial rivers
Of my aching heart,
Humbling and uplifting at once.

Its the bleating sound of a bamboo flute
From a distance
Threshing my implacable frozen soul
I try to disintegrate this music, these faces,
Struggling to dig up the sleeping past
On the slippery surface
Of my rancorous present.

I can sense
How close this music is to me
As the beloved faces encircle me
Round and round encircling---
Grips me tighter and tighter
Stiffling me from the venomous respiration
Of the smoldering world.

Another esurient slap of the frothing waves
On my burrow's bloody wall,
The squalid reality---
Shatters the inertia of my infant universe,
Brings me down to my concealed coffin,
My somber burrow.

And I am here,
In my burrow,
Suspended---
In the landscape of despair,
Oscillating---
In the midst of 
The whispering dream and the howling reality.


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY SOHEL KARIM 1998