The Pande-moniac

SUMERA SALEEM

April 9, 2020

Gyring towards a uniformly ordered world 

Where waxwings hear other birds perching on 

Commonalities and not differences, 

Things falling together.

Though the hunger ridden air 

Is more dangerous to life than an unknown deadly code,

Ready to corrupt bodyfiles, everywhere 

An innocence of fear awakens 

A consciousness of being conscious of something. 

Lying is not a disease anymore, truth not a cure. 

Revelation of death is still a mystery at hand, 

A cycle of universe is folding into a new normal 

Of old struggle, the beginning to a new end 

When a magazine image troubles my sight, 

Somewhere in Delhi, wandering figures 

With rolled baggage on their heads, 

Some with children carrying on their shoulders, 

A blank glimpse of callous calls of death hanging in the air, 

Are shambling their sway, their shadows 

Slanting on dark grey roads as if the birds 

Flying back home were fluttering bewilderedly 

How the landscape had offered to them a new picture around,

Twenty years of this century of humdrum and noise 

Switched into a stony silence, somewhere of everywhere

This silence awaits to fall into pieces with a laughter of music.

SUMERA SALEEM is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan; gold medalist in English literature from the University of the Punjab; and sub-editor in the department of English, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. She has published poems in national and international literary magazines.