Cerebration

Woman of Rain: Insha Muzafar

Insha Muzafar is a woman from Kashmir. She has a M.Sc. and M.Phil. in botany from University of Kashmir and when she doesn't write, she teaches kids botany. She writes poetry because it provides her alternative ways to experience, comprehend and document her being as a woman, and those around her in the face of all the hegemonic power structures. Poetry for her is the celebration of freedom, to express the world in our own language and terms, in a world rife with violence of power and polemic narratives.

(Rain sprouts in my hair)
and resonates in cadence of their weeping
(mourning your death)
drips off the rusted eaves
and moistens the parched veins of salt runnels
I have been tying up those
shoelaces for centuries
fondling the pain of half finished journeys
nested in the contours of vanishing footsteps
( the pendulous strands of rain hair)
the pumpkin vines trail along walls
into the mirages of summer
and headaches of afternoon dreams
spin cobwebs on the crumbling walls
( hair is rain)
mountains smell like you and Azadi
and grey sorrow congeals with
the tumult of copper dusks
( rain hair)
the time sleeps in your sweaters
and my insomnia gathers
dandelions of nightmares in the heaths of darkness
what can be more ironic than belief;
the night stole everything from me
in the guise of your silhouette

Woman of Rain: Insha Muzafar