When My Poor Friend Married

By Sheikh Shabir Kulgami

Sitting next to me in the bus, my friend was brooding,

Where have we reached? He answered not.

Where are you, dear? Come back, come back, dear.

A stream of tears flooded down his eyes;

I am poor, yet I have entered the ship of wedlock

What then, dear? What makes you drop these diamonds down your eyes?

I fear, I fear I can’t make her happy,

I didn’t have money to buy her a ring;

I didn’t have money to buy her the necklace.

Yet, I plunged into the smithy,

I am a freak, I am a foreigner,

What though I have a family of my flesh and blood?

They call her skinny which is a bombshell,

Her flood of tears and sobs and sobs part ne’er company;

The wedlock is a mirror under a sledgehammer-

The mirror in pieces but for my and her flight into oblivion.

By Sheikh Shabir Kulgami