I recently heard this beautiful sher by Nazeer Banarasi that I’m sharing today, in the overflowing bouquet of shers that Nusrat unleashes on his intoxicated listeners. When I heard these lines first, I stopped whatever I was doing, to feel the vazan of the life that coaxed this sweet surrender from the poet’s pen. I heard the calm after the heave of passion’s sigh, the sublime freedom of love.
I remember Yeats’s missive to his lover. His request -
“I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
What does it mean to burn a life to cinders, to become a shadow of this hollow shell of skin, bone and flesh? What does it mean to embrace silence, to negate presence, or “I”, at the request of another? Is that kindness? or love?
Note: You can find the complete ghazal at rekhta
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