Ode To The Class Of 2024

 

A few days after tomorrow 

Between climate change and judgment day 

The waves will stand at the front gate 

And the guards will have to let them in

Even if it is after 7:30. 

The waves will run across the field 

They will 

Weep into the front steps 

Leap into the chem labs 

Creep into the bathrooms 

And on that day

The bell will no longer ring

And the bridge will crumble and fall

But until the bridge falls from the sky

These walls will sing of you and I. 

What if years from now

At half past three 

When school is almost empty

We sneak back in as ghosts. 

We will break into the roof to see 

K block, G block, the bridge and the field. 

All that we had lost. 

But

What if we find that 

On some sleepy desk in a physics room

Our names are still inscribed,

That a certain book in the library 

Is still folded where you left it,

That the literature room still carries a whisper of my poems 

That the art room still holds a fragment of your dreams. 

That in the field beneath sand and sand and sand 

There is the sand that we had walked on all those years ago. 

Maybe floating through these corridors we will realise 

That lessons taught in heartbreak and in friendship echo 

for years and years through stone walls 

That this school is not made of mortar or of concrete 

But of dreams and dreams and memories. 

So until boatbasin swells into the sea 

And the Indian Ocean envelops Karachi 

Until the bridge falls from the sky 

These walls will sing of you and I.