The Mosque Handpump

Three poems by Ubaid Bukhari

Relics of the Sea

Distances dissolve in the shadowless noon,

and my brain pulsates like a warm snail.

Outside my house under a humid cherry tree,

I gulp cough syrup on the dried ocean floor,

while crows peck and crack fossils – relics of the sea

I am the serpent king, begging Vishnu

on a cold foggy shore to defeat the water demon,

and drain the ocean to dry bones.

Young shaven men in billowing Kasaya

near the Harwan stupas weep in falling snow,

chanting “Sarvam dukham, dukham.”

Through a narrow gap in jagged basalts

my ancestors in coarse wool Khirka

slip from Bukhara into Kashmir

on frozen horses carrying God in canvas bags.

I draw the curtains on five centuries,

meeting them with Naturalism and the Big Bang—

but they look past me toward the other Abraham,

among broken idols, spreading the blessed word.

Above the fossilized Linga and Ushnisha,

people bend their heads before an Arabian God

who crossed the Middle East

on the frozen horse of my ancestor.

Disinherited from the heirloom of the blessed word

I stand among the ruins without a language for light

Harvesting Saffron under the Milky way

Saffron fumes fluttered like smoky butterflies

In the blue silken night of our nakedness,

And women gathering embers in Pampore fields

laughed at their burnt hands.

Above us, the stars exploded,

spilling rosy ink in the Milky Way,

while heaven-fallen deer wept

beneath the rising cobalt moon.

A face etched with a zodiac wheel smiled,

and her shaman eyes told me,

"We both are merging into Shiva"

Love, throughout the summer nights,

ripened inside her chest

like a pomegranate orchard,

and autumn banished my hungry mouth.

In that yellow afternoon gust,

photographs, tears, and roses drifted by,

and her poppied hands scribbled the eclipsed sky:

"No, I won't let you go."

I imagined all these warm roads

that slipped past the mulberry trees

would bend somewhere

to meet her olive arms.

Memories, leaf by leaf, floated

from rain-washed aspens

and broke their heads against the glass panes.

Now I am a drowsy cat

in the sunlit corner,

who swore never to return anyone's love,

and a schoolboy

who has forgotten his way back home.

The Mosque Handpump

It was the winter penance

of the blue frozen men—

to hand-pump pure, warm waters

from the gritty darkness,

while the common supply lines

froze and clogged.

One day I woke dripping tar

from my face and ran the branched

anatomy of the muddy streets.

I clanged hard at the sweaty handle,

and the iron mouth coughed

rusty ooze upon my feet.

Above me, the snow-loaded rafters

bent in parabolas,

squealed near the point break.

From latticed pine eaves,

razor-edged icicles

bent their pointy fingers

towards me.

A river of men

in white kurtas walked in,

and I, slimy and heavy,

plunged in the current.

About the Poet:

Ubaid Bukhari is a poet and literature teacher based in Kashmir, whose work frequently explores psychological landscapes shaped by memory. His writing, which has been featured in Gulmohar Quarterly, often delves into the interplay between ancestral history, regional landscape, and the surrealism of grief.