THE TRAIN TO NOWHERE

(This poem is about the last train from Pakistan to India)

I hurried onward

A hundred more in front of me

My grandmother too beside

Too tired 

Too weary.

I picked up the wildflower

That grew beside the station

I asked , 

Won't we come back again?

She said ,

No you wouldn't want to.

Bye little bush, I said 

For I may never see you again.

Where are we going?

Away

From the land of dust and fog

Away

From the land of desolate moors

Away 

From the place

Where dawn forgets to shed its light

Where night only companion

Is dancing firelight

Away 

Where the birds still sing of tomorrow

Away 

Where the tree roots don't hold

A bleeding earth together

Away

Where our tears don't flow

Like cracked rivers dry

Away

Where the smiles we smile

Would still reach our eyes.

 

But this is my home.

We trudged onward

I did not know where

To board a train

That would take us nowhere.

We got on as the train slipped away

Some were left behind

Some were crushed underneath

By the great rolling wheels

But then some 

Were always meant to leave

And some

Were never meant to go.

The wails of agony

The cries and the shouts

Seemed to be 

Songs of worship

To something holy

Someone great.

I saw no one bleeding

For someone covered my eyes

All I saw was

Black

Grey

And white.

The train ran forward

And the hinterlands behind

I remembered

How I used to run

To catch the sheep in the meadows green

Except now

I tripped and stumbled

Yet still did not hold

All I had.

Sometime we are stuck underwater

Too numb

With the weight of the sky over our heads

And so we succumb

To the noises

The gun shots

To the bodies that fall.

Until all the world

Blurred in red

Becomes clear again

And the red in our eyes

Marrs the faces

Of the ones we loved once before.

And so did I

Stand stiller than still waters

As my grandmother smiled

Towards heaven

No pain crossed her eyes

The ones who have known wounds

Believe that their pain

Is salvation.

I saw the smoke glide up to the sky

I saw it sadly twisting up the metal tracks

As it became the clouds

Only to be forgotten

Until it echoed

All the songs I wanted to sing

All the things I did not yet know

I thought

When we die

Don't we all go to the same heaven?

That night the sky

Was scarred with infinite stars

Perhaps the world wanted to show me

All that had endured.

Before I stopped seeing

The beauty in little things.

Before I reached home again.