With Trembling Mind and Trembling Hands
– Faruque Sayed, Silkeborg, Denmark.
With trembling mind and trembling hands
I picked up my book –
Inside its hard cover
Seemed hidden a weary soul.
Upon its form lay the dust of time,
Its pages heavy with sighs,
Hanging limp like damp cloth –
Burdened, spent, desolate.
Gently, I opened it;
I knew not where to begin,
Yet curiosity lingered—
Like light waiting to slip
Through the crack of a forgotten door.
My eyes, blurred by the gray of time,
Came still for a moment,
And the current of melancholy ceased.
On the right-hand side,
An emptied white page,
A cold, detached number printed upon it,
Within which hid a silent question.
The page, unwritten – yet speaking –
As if invisible ink
Were slowly searching for its own meaning –
Like an unknown riddle
Being born within the heart,
Before the word, beyond meaning itself.
The mind races on –
I have not yet asked,
“What does it mean?”
My gaze grows clouded
In the coffin’s whiteness,
And I see weeping shadows
Blending into one another –
Two figures arise,
Swaying, laughing,
As if caught in a cruel jest –
Seven and Three!
Amid the trembling surface of the page
I glimpse a profound inevitability,
A reflection, a truth,
Unwritten, yet somehow spoken.
And there, in the blurred mirror,
Instead of ink,
In reflection burns a question-
“Is this the end?