Take the Step

by Yanis Iqbal

Tremblingly and caressingly,
The sun spins a thread of morning
From the depths and dregs of yesterday’s night,
Aware that nothing has changed -
Wan emptiness of hunger and misery continue to abound
Millstones of money keep crushing the wheat of humanity into powders of profit
The fragile bones of workers still swell with sea-like sighs of worry.
Streaks of sunlight walk on patches of pain,
Unable to soak themselves in the stream of sounds
Stitched by song thrushes
Battling against the dry din of oppression.
The ends of earth are unraveling
Twisted topographies of concrete asphalt
Leave not even a single pore
For moist memories to percolate
Into the musty mud of beingness.
Sun-scalded chunks of smoke
Sift through the sooty ruins of rusty roofs,
Chipped marbles of a ramshackle house
Where once lived haggard humans,
Willows of longing and broad-leaved tulips of eternal gashes,
All now knotted together into a basket of bone.
These days, the silent strings of the lyre of heart
Have grown restless.

They are panting for springtime
When charnel houses will sink in the hot tears of anger.
Our quiet lips are filled with fire,
On the verge of saying something delightfully new.
Sandstorms are raging inside our muted eyes,
Forcing us to look beyond the crimson mist of wretchedness.
Ahead of us lies a wood-nurtured glade,
Promising an anchorage
For the ship of heartache and suffering.
We only have to step on the pebble pathway leading to it.