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POETRY

TWO POEMS

BY AZFAR HUSSAIN
Atypical Haiku Dedicated to Caliban
You taught me language, and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse.
—Caliban (William Shakespeare, The Tempest)
1: Caliban, run run!
Run run run run run run run
I know it's no fun.
2: "Caliban, be in!"
Between "being" and "seeming" Caliban is drinkin'.
3: Caliban is stinkin', While Prospero is pukin': And who says, "Come in?"
4: A fleshy white guy: Caliban's dream and boredom He wants to buy.
5: You care! And you care? But I don't, rain or sunshine.
History—a snare!
6: Layer after layer
You make the same old damn point On my foot, on my hair.
7: "Progress is history's Dirty joke?" Or its bad rhyme: Caliban fakes a sneeze.
8: Caliban comes back! In boredom under the moon Someone talks of lack.
9: "Be quiet, Caliban!
Don't dirty my Miranda!" Caliban takes a U-turn.
10: The night's dark—it's ink.
Caliban pees on the brink, His pee-stains stick and stink.
Tentative Textures of Silence 7
silence is not a thin glass you cannot break it neither can I
for silence is a country of forever-fumbling trying to drop a hint about the last syllable
of a lost word
after our bodies meet and mingle in their concord and discord
after the Hijal wood burns in your eyes: two drops of infinitude
silence writes its name
5
words cry and die
and turn into stones
when you sprinkle your footprints on the sand
and silence slips and slides like a ghost of a sign
4
a tall dark woman
her silences
accumulate over time
while my guilt warms itself by a moment's musical fire
3
just in two minutes you killed my love with words
2
eternity is a perhaps-land in the world of smoke
eternity is a slippery soap fallen from the hand of a washerman
an urgent plea in the manifesto of the rains
silences of the world unite
Azfar Hussain teaches Liberal
Studies/Interdisciplinary Studies at Grand Valley State University, USA and is Vice-President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS).