Rehan Qayoom- Two Poems

Rehan Qayoom is a poet of English and Urdu, editor, translator and archivist, educated at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has featured in numerous literary publications and performed his work internationally.  He has published 2 books of poetry and several works of prose.

www.rehanqayoom.weebly.com

Society Meeting

To brandish all the signs of genius

To bear the marks of disability

To read the myth of Mighty Peleus

With such diminished visibility

Are not the signs of High Society

Nor will they bring in any money now

Can this be life when all I do is read?

And go out once a while unheard, unseen

Alone and unaccompanied – I plead

To be let in the group, I have not been

Involved in anything like this: 15

Poets all discussing poetry

“Oh Yes” “Of Course” and that dull “Sure, why not?”

“Well, you know, when he published Don Juan”

“It all went down so badly and he got”

“Some very bitter reviews”, “And … well … one can

Either take things badly”, “But not Byron”

He made the most of it, he fobbed them off

Go on you dullards mocking: ones who make

The money from these meetings, those who eat

The cakes and all the pies and also take

The freebies to be had from such a meet

Let me alone now with my bread and water

And then return back home to Homer’s Daughter

A Poem of Maturity

After Parveen Shakir.

 

Sobbing like a child he insisted

That they bury him alive with his dead wife

The lads nudged and winked

At each other

The elderly said 'He has gone mad'

And the priests had a hard time dragging him back home!

Routinely he would go to Mewashah after work

Carrying flowers and incense candles

Then he would go every Thursday

Then every ninth day

Then on the 2 Eids, and then every Shab-barat

Then annually

Till one day he alighted from the number 60 bus

Into the scorching sun

And his eyes settled upon a tree

As he remembered

The new typist who’d arrived at the office that day

He laughed

Realising that the world

Does not consist of one person alone