For Children in Wartime
This is the art class.
The theme of the lesson
is Sarajevo in springtime.
On a sheet of A4 appears a street
with its men and women
scattered
on their backs;
red balloons
from their insides
pop
on the pavement.
Cars in the background
are shot full of holes.
The artist is twelve and a half.
In her neighbour’s piece,
a zigzag across the window
is perhaps a smashed windshield.
The roof is literally flying
off one house,
a twist of orange flame
spiralling upwards.
A hush descends as twenty
small heads bend over
a fresh set of drawings.
Doors, closed,
have the faces of people frightened.
Trees weep out tears the size of snowdrops.
A pair of spectacles lies on the street,
next to a man with closed eyes
looking very dead.
But that’s not me, hearing still
the mortar level the walls,
sniper bullet hit
somewhere across the courtyard.
Cities are going
but what’s to hold up a wax crayon?
Children know
that pictures cannot be stretched too far.
School’s in progress
as if it were a prayer—
about how it was supposed to be.
(stanza break)
Just six feet from me
the lawn’s growing wild
below the daily reticent
jasmine;
each blade an argument
of this season’s excesses.
Without raiders, this street is fine.
But, alas. I too can’t
write from the point of view of grass.
Alamgir Hashmi
(First published in The Pakistan Times)
© Alamgir Hashmi
PEOPLE
(For the Sondhis)
From Kashmir you came
to Lahore
to wed this handsome
man of economics
(come from Jullundur,
via Indore)
who played Hamlet in
the same breath
as he lectured to fix
each flower in its
place
in the College
gardens,
expecting they would
nod ever
to the lightest breeze
with an English sense
of purpose.
Even the winter terms
were pleasant.
Hockey matches could
warm the spirit
as in the Forties
nearly each stick
trained for the
penalty stroke.
Evenings were
rose-walks and tea.
It was this knowledge—
life held together by
choice, where one is
and will be, within a
peashooting chance.
Come 1947 podding to
fruit and fall away,
the vegetal crease
split,
seed and flower
scatter by the hour.
The College clock, no
matter how
you rewind it, rarely
agrees
with Pakistan Standard
Time.
The fountain named
after you vents bubbles
of some ghostly speech
no play-actor can use.
Anyway, you two that
side of the border,
christian-and-hindu
visited sometimes here
your muslim daughters
happy in their
families. Thus years
went sliding
like the snow round
your hill-house
between Simla and
Kasauli.
You were away then
briefly.
Those sweet-scented
flowers you left for him
were snuffed out in
his sunless room.
He was asleep,
buried where the
har-singhar
sheds its flowers
timely.
(stanza break)
You changed country
again,
back in Lahore to what
connects you—
no, not the land that
deludes
its own voice, but one
last inflection,
the stem stitch of
family—serial views
of just how it should
be:
your daughters to
their husbands objured,
the grandchildren and
great-grandchildren
growing, filling in
like houseplants, pets.
What you lost of them
you would not see.
Pain was the only
potion you knew
which could overcome
the memory.
Today, in your
blue-cushioned chair
waiting for tea, about
to comb your hair,
you take your final
leave.
Your husband dead
elsewhere,
the gods, still
vigilant, claim you,
each in his own name:
you were courteous;
your grace now beyond
question.
Parishioner, priest
and passer-by all know
the right words to
action, your body below.
As if you had wished
it, on this bright
spring day, a
thoughtful tahli
bow-waves a kindly
shade;
imprinting here what
you see, can’t see.
A shower of rose
petals slowly
fades in the fresh
earth.
Over and over they
come, settle down.
This must be the way
love is made.
—Alamgir Hashmi
___________________________________
This poem was read by the poet at the Foreign Service
Academy, Islamabad, on 08th April, 1995. The late Professor G. D. Sondhi was
the first non-British Principal of the Government College, Lahore, and died in
India in 1966. Mrs Enid Lila Sondhi, ninety-five, died in Lahore in March this
year (1995).
(First published in The Pakistan Times)
© Alamgir
Hashmi