A Minute Silence

Posted on October 10, 2017

If each minute of silence

we’ve ever observed

were tied into a bundle;

what a bumper harvest of silence that would be!

If these minutes actually counted;

weary hours of wake keeping would turn into days,

days into sad weeks of endless weeping.

Months and years would grow branches that stretch far

into wasteful decades of mournful centuries.

The minutest minutes, the unobserved minutes,

the highly celebrated names

and those submerged in the shadows of obscurity;

They’re all but equal before the Unquestionable Time Keeper.

If those requiem Masses,

Funerals, Prayers and Parades,

all took place here and now;

only a minute silence would be observed and no more.

If all the blinding clouds of tears we’ve shed

since Year the year nineteen fourteen were passed

into one single Act, like the waters of Lagdo;

we all would again be submerged in their salty floods.

If all the heart renting sighs we’ve heaved

in sad memory of all who have gone ahead of us

were heaved into one windy hoot;

the old owl would stand no chance.

If all unsung Dirges and Obituaries in this homestead

were all printed and pasted on this timeline;

what a monumental Epitaph it would make.

No literature would stand a chance.

If our minutes spanned just too brief

not brief enough to raise offsprings into adulthood

and fulfill our earthly missions;

what sorrowful Minutes of Silence we all would make

Yet, if in the last stanza

at the end of our minutes,

we are found wanting in the eye of the Unquestionable Time Keeper;

no vanity would ever surpass such vanity.

(In fond memory of souls of all who have gone ahead of us, from the inception of our earthly journeys till now).

By Terseer Sam Baki

Author of Euphoria of Sophistry

And 2nd Runner-Up, ANA National Poetry Prize 2015.