Colorless Shame and the Plea for Love – Faruque Sayed, Hamburg.
The girl still sits beside the overbridge,
waiting only for deserved winter-sun’s
long-sought moment of ease.
No color of shyness stains her brow,
nor any soft appetences for love.
She knows no language of accusation;
having lost all, she is somehow satisfied today.
Into the darkness that held her back
she set fire with thousand torches,
with her ungrudging hands.
No broad, hand-drawn streak
of vermilion marks her forehead,
only smoke-blurred memories cling today!
The butchers of faith have stolen away
What once was tender with adoring love,
And the dew-soft grace of her blossoming youth.
That night, countless jasmine flowers fell
with her unruly tears.
The stars in her frightened eyes
are now dry and still.
On her shoulders and back, bleeds
half-hidden maps of lash-marks.
In the city where the roars
of iron beasts drowns the crickets’ song,
the girl still sits, beneath the mud-stained feet
of hurrying urban sinners.
Her unsated, thirsting mind weeps –
like a winter riverbed,
its glassy waters gone in wounded pride.
In a golden cage remain dream-washed love
and the song of dewdrops
etched upon the crown of the tamarisk tree.