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Return the bodies

By: Mudasir Firdosi

The Poem

When I left my torso floating high in the clouds,

Winter couldn’t help it, pulling together the waters

It snowed for days for that the burden was so heavy,

Even the mighty rivers froze hearing about the savagery

I was gliding free looking down on my youthful parents,

Pain in their chests was something which I couldn’t dare to see

My father lost and broken in thousands of pieces no one could glimpse,

And my mother wailing inside her heart not to disturb the gods,

My assassins, jubilant yet scared of my lifeless body,

Buried me far away from the sight of my childhood friends,

My old grandparents, aunts and bodies of my ancestors,

How could I harm them when I no longer exist to shoulder my father’s coffin?

Father, who wants to die for my remains for one last time,

And bury me close near the memories of my playful days,

the walnut tree around the corner of a small cliff,

Where I used to slide on the snow when the winters endured

But now it’s just snowing day and night for me never to return

Even if my friends wrote on the walls using the very hail

‘Return the bodies’

so that my mother could cry one last time

And my father may live a day longer to close the accounts in my school

For now, I am not even the corpse, which can be claimed by my rightful owner,

I am free to become the mist, or snow or the cloud above my darling land.

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