The Hand

Farhad Ahmed

I am standing on a bridge,
like a stone chiseled by the wind.
In this dark time,
there is no one to reach out with his hand,
and the wistful river now calls me down
to where the ghosts of late poets look at me,
as if I was an accursed messenger of their fates.

While the shadows lazily creep along the purple river
like a funeral procession
(and I thought that there would be
no one at my funeral),
inside me there is still a weak glimmer of hope
that her hand shall appear from the darkness,
warm, shivering and moist
like this night in May.

But there is no hand
in the night chained by darkness,
just a freezing river,
staring at me with its icy eye,
calling me to its embrace.

The face of the night changes
the further it proceeds, the darkness descends
and the horrible clouds run the skies
greasy with blood.
These are dark heavenly travelers,
they aimlessly roam the heavenly paths
like eternally drunk sailors.

In the boundlessness of the heavenly seas
they are now looking for their star
which left in the easterners lap.

The angry clouds descend between heaven and earth
like led generals,
their lustful laughter lightens
the late hours of night,
their steps echo in the dark masterfully next to me,
I see their eyes flaming
with demonic fire and lightning,
and the shadows march like led soldiers
behind their generals
straight towards me.

Life is a battlefield, and people are warriors
faithful to their shadows,
just like their shadows are faithful to them,
and my shadow is down there
at the head of the funerary procession,
waiting for me.

I am standing on the bridge of eternal youth,
like old age chiseled by the wind,
I hear the heavenly steps of thunder and lightning,
I see the fiery hands
that iron the lonely space of the purple river
like my purple hearse,
I am watching into the dark night's eyes,
and into the fiery heavenly hands,
but there is no human hand,
I am leaving to go to my brothers
into their purple embrace.