The Diseased Tree

What grief does to a man, a termite does to a tree- Amjad Islam Amjad

it was a green acacia in front of a window
now a powdered stump, a limbed Stonehenge
devoid of worshippers, less than a bust, a
tapering mummy, wondering at its history,
only for passers staring, thinking what fell
upon its life, salinity inoculated roots,
pathogens cut their mortality, even ants
lurched it, winter’s rain made a cistern of
muck, no bird but an occasional kite perched
whereas crows spared it, taking vain flights—
on deathbed will someone build a cemetery
of fungal legacy for incarnation somewhere.

at the far end, I watch lapwings exhibiting
the landing but just before the touchdown,
they swerve and disappear among trees for
nothing, solo flights, congregating next
moment causing delusions of disembarking,
a weight on the evening; guests lost their way
despite sharing a location, the kitchen emitted  
smells, excrement-stained floors, a sustained  
appetite for eating together perished in the eyes
seeking company in silence, another sky over us.

stripped trees in the dying darkness
showed up like ghosts watching over,
some silence peeped over houses
surrounded by wilderness where
barbed wire was left for the eyes,
a sulking rain dodged the windshield,
you poured tea, and it was the sound
my ears stole, pink, and puffed,I glanced
undressing behind an ebony screen
an arc of vertebrates leering away
all I have in my mind is a touch evicting me.

Once, a man became a future sentence—
like the furniture of mind hosts,
he talked about the coming winter,
watching leaves acquire shapes, on a
bench, he carved out
a would-be tired gardener,
sooner his hands would be flaky
expected deterioration, a simple
image of time passing-

probably on a squeaking couch
he would gaze following a kestrel
landing on a tree,
prospects of a beach walk, (Yes!)
language may run out of patience
heart like a dictionary might show words,

a divan littered with books, a
mirror covered with a crocheted shawl,
an austere ebony cabinet,

all sentences
made of the future are like chairs, which
rock and not talk, hoping for a sitter
we will.

in times of haranguing and lashings
we secure a bench in a small garden

nightjars compete with robins’ whir,
beeping cellphones track silence’s

last resort, which is my love for you
exchanged in slips of the tongue,

a prelingual moan, I confused with
consent, expecting me to submit,

your visits dried, made your vehicle
a metonym of presence, till one day

at the gate, a message spotted us
wrapped in a shawl, you became

a word prohibited, a version denied
picked by a vendor, a stray dog,

usherers sent by someone nearby
to edit our habits of solitude.

it was not you but your voice I heard passing
from the glare of the corridor behind
a door, you were struggling with yourself,

that workplace anxiety sneaks in like tiny
atoms in dust, we carry in laptops and bags
dossiers like companions, our orbits of profit,

savoring a cold tea alone, missing someone
except that the mind wants to defy the heart,
like a text message flickering on silent mode,

face that appears with the call, there are
other ways of meeting without voice, in search
of silence, how many times I have decided to
taper these excursions around your room,
there you are, and you will be, away there.

how irritating, like a phrase to find you missing
from the sentence on love, I have been fixing
all day to have a glimpse of you, a full stop to
waiting, and there was no colon to pause at,

to gaze at its length, an auxiliary verb to lift
us from this structure lacking basic grammar,
in a story where it moves from silence to silence
walking through rooms where we often pass by–

two passages are equal in length, but one goes beyond
the page opened, that horror of a chapter ending
the author, sitting under a surreal shadow
of a table lamp, deciding to reduce their
dalliance, a park, a bench, an urge to squeeze hands–
the part they have in the book, editing, taking a toll.

Corridors wafted with frilled interlacing of pansies
in the daylight, your hands wore their tone
a tinged purple when the sun fell through the windows,
later in the evening, eyes stored shadows.
On the floor you walked on for me; walls mere watchers
handing me a book you borrowed, and it was the
center of the passage. I locked the door, the keys
squeaked like a heartbeat misses after a memory
returns, in darkness, there was nothing except a portico
a building fed on solitude, imagination executing,
rued over the use of language can take you anywhere.

Once the rain takes away earth’s privacy
some puddles live under a subdued grass
misty curls enclose birds, wet and drizzly
as if water colonizes trees like an empire
inundating geographies castled by storms.

in the next room bridged by a staircase you
are present and the time wimbles, waiting
creates a plan of seeing you coming down
but a blankness accosts what if the more
planned things slip though fingers, just
as papers written were stained by a cat,
the notes on the preamble of Akhmatova’s
poems have faded; those frozen winters
her protégée Brodsky depicted buried in
his exilic graveyard, the more these examples
turn up, instead an owl-grey evening meet.

an almost sedentary cat mewed while there
was water gathering in big puddles around it
snuggled in a corner, a squirrel made it to
to the sparrow’s house, a thrifty move after
house sparrows disappeared, mature trees
axed for a metro line, a smeared dog scurried
its skin in tatters, just then an ambulance
whizzed past, returning to old text messages,
at least there are a few free of language’s
scare we may be carrying till the end.