"Where Souls Remember"

Where Souls Remember"

A fusion of poetic worlds

O heart, be still—

For night has spilled its ink across the sky,

And stars whisper verses forgotten by time.

The moon, an ancient calligrapher,

Writes names of lovers on the wind,

Only the soul can read them.

The wine of longing has touched my lips,

And I, like Rumi, spin

Not with feet—but with fire.

What is this thirst, this ache,

That drinks me instead?

Come, let us sit in the silence

Where Tagore left his flute by the river,

And the breeze still carries his melody—

Soft, like the skin of memory,

Fragile, like the scent of jasmine at dawn.

O beloved, you are not just flesh—

You are thought.

You are the echo in Neruda’s chamber,

Where every shadow of your hand

Is a continent of desire.

Speak, for your voice

Is Shakespeare’s stage—

A tempest, a sonnet, a dagger and a kiss.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

Even the summer envies you now.

But you left me,

Like Ghalib’s wineglass left the table—

Shattered, not empty.

I gathered the shards with my verses

And bled through every couplet.

“Hazāroñ ḳhvāhisheñ aisī ke har ḳhvāhish pe dam nikle,”

But none as fatal as the wish to hold you.

Do you remember,

When we danced with Hafez under violet skies?

He told us,

"The heart is a candle,

But only love can light it without burning."

Time is drunk on moments we forgot to live.

Each tick is Neruda's metaphor,

Each tock—Dickinson’s hush.

And yet the soul marches on,

Bolder than Whitman’s barefoot strides

Across the prairies of being.

Rebel winds rise from Langston’s blues,

And whisper in the ears of cities:

“We, too, sing America,”

Even if our songs are unsung.

You are the river, and I—

The endless traveler who drowns with every sip.

I seek you in mirrors,

But find only reflections of your absence,

Like Tagore's lost bird

That still circles the same sky.

Rumi said,

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”

But I crawl through memories—

Wings folded like prayers never said.

The world burns for love and forgets the flame.

It names wars in the name of peace,

Writes treaties over bones,

Sings lullabies in the language of silence.

But you, beloved,

Are not of this world—

You are of the realm where Neruda dreams,

Where Dickinson hides her secrets in a daisy,

Where Shakespeare writes not for kings,

But for the beggar watching stars.

Come.

Walk with me through Ghalib’s alleys,

Where pain perfumes the air

And love is served in broken cups.

Let us wander through Dante’s infernos,

Find paradise not above—but within.

Let us taste Khalil’s sacred sorrow,

And drink from the same well of fire and flight.

The rose of Hafez still blooms,

Even in ashes.

Even in exile.

Even now.

Tonight—

Let all languages fall silent.

Let all borders melt like wax.

Let Urdu and English

Persian and Spanish

Bengali and Italian

Hold hands in verse.

Let love be the mother tongue.

Let longing be the law.

Let poetry be the place

Where every lost soul comes home.

And in that home, beloved—

There will be no questions, no answers.

Only gazes that speak

And silences that understand.

Here ends the poem, but not the longing.

The pen is tired, but the soul still writes—

On wind, on water, on stars,

On every place where a poet once dreamed.

The whisper of your name still haunts the silence.

We were promised eternity, but given only echoes.

Love burned down to a lonely ember in the dark.

Your face returns like a mirage at every horizon.

I write in ink made from old lament and longing.

The horizon carries your shadow, stretched by time.