Three Poems

I

In the silence of the heart

Entered the assassin

And murdered the flower

That bloomed unseen.

He tore it petal by petal 

And his hand slowly ran

with cool liquid fragrance.

Flowers die like lovers

Pining and desiring,

Unrequited and burning,

Tombs of lingering sweetness.

II

Silent twilight under the skull.

Crepuscular crickets chirp

And dusk-singing cicadas drone,

Myriad rasping knives slice,

Slicing up a big nut bone-white.

The ceaseless creatures hum

Like monks in fierce meditation.

Lucent neurons fly off the brain 

Like ricocheting electrons,

Flustering thoughts darkly stalk

As shades would dim corridors, 

Half-formed, glimmering, melting, 

Nascent, evanescent

Under the skull in silent, shrill twilight.

III

Waiting keeps a different time.

Its clock isn't made in town 

Nor has the maker an address 

But he'd sure deliver an empty dial face 

When you sorely seek to fill in 

The boundless space

You brood on and on endlessly

Till you wake up to your fond illusion.

Waiting keeps a different time 

On weird phantom calibration:

Its seconds ride the hour hand

Its hours travel a desolate land

And its maker is a juggler of sand

And the hourglass a miracle in his hand

where the grains trickle without an end.

Masud Mahmood is a Professor of English, Chittagong University.