The Grammar School Love Song

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.”

Part 1

Karachi lies here between

The desert and the sea.

The sages tell us

The water of the sea

and the sand of the desert teach

Many lessons

On forgiveness and forget

On the constantly shifting

Shape of the sand

And the eternally breathing breast of the sea.

But in this little slice of concrete

Between the wandering dunes

And the mystic waves

We must be stubborn

And look back but not forward

And hold onto our woe

For this is all we own.

All we will ever own

So let us go, dear traveller

And make our grief our friend

So Let us go, city dweller

To The start and not the end.

Part 2

Isn't this the room?

Still the same wash of paint,

Remember this shade

This shade of the afternoon

That comes rushing through

The wall of six windows.

Oh the window

The window

And a face beyond it.

Still there. My eyes are whirlpools

And all falls in

This room, this time, the windows, the scene.

Let us stop our courtly tour

Through this realm of memory

And stop here for a while

So that I

May sit in this room and weep

If you walk out and see

Across the balcony

Beyond the spreading concrete field,

And clouds of salt and nicotine

There is a bridge.

Strong, stately, commanding and fierce

It watches over the yard

Science blocks, classrooms on the left and the right

The landscape of my memory

But it will not see me sitting here

To begin with beginnings

Walk through the bridge

And try not to look down at the inner

Courtyard. Too much love was slaughtered there

Too many souls cry out From this inferno of dream.

Burning in Karachi heat. There is the bench

Where dreams were kept

As a bouquet. And slowly

Softly, intricately. With the grace so godly of burning touch

They were picked apart

Petal by petal

And bud by bud

So look not down

And hold your ears

For flowers scream and wail.

And as you make the walk across

This bridge, so thin and frail.

Let me sit in this room and weep

You must have stepped

Out of the sun

Into the realm of shadow

Do not walk down the stairs

Our tale is not yet there.

Only stand

And face the wall

With the names of headmasters and mistresses

And jubilarians and others who have served their sentences

You although have not. You have only just arrived

And the cauldron of memory is at only the slight-

est flame. Look blankly at the wall

Above you is a dome

The heavens can't look through

We have escaped their domain

beyond

The dome of no doors.

The air is rising and your feet are sinking into the floor

Don't take a step back

This hall is turning greyer as you watch

Keep on looking. Try not to think

Or wonder, or question or feel anything, or think of a thing, or anyone or what you’ll do and what you've done

And there.

Your heart has stopped.

And now you will watch the love song

Of a lover of the Grammar School. While I

Sit in this room and weep.

Under the dome of no doors

And to your left is the library.

The library is the softest flame

In our infernic journey but beware.

Beware the library.

Outside these walls of concrete and papyrus

There is a field of daffodils

And a mad dog runs from a far off land

And falls into the blooms. His muscles soften and

regain their strength

aching he goes to sleep

The warm sun basks his naked bod

Trembling like the wavy sea.

Elsewhere children, not yet old enough to read

Wrestle in a sandpit and cry and stomp their feet

And then when bored of crying they return to blissful wrestl-

Ing.

Such is the fate of the unlettered.

For the library is an inky ocean, of a million swarming jellyfish

And inside each one, a thousand buzzing galaxies. And surely

These worlds of living breathing words

Are worlds that I have dwelt in.

But these are not happy worlds.

Blessed are the unlettered.

If you wish to see the blood and body

That has been spilt on the empty altar of these libraries

Hear in the silence of the night,

Those men who howl for the moon,

See at the break of spring

Those whose blood makes roses red.

Or hear. Whose songs gave flight to birds?

And if you wish to see the greatest sacrifice of history

Then come back and see me

Sit in this room and weep.

You must go in. But walk into the desert

Do not dive into the sea

This will be the first test of your holy foolishness.

If truly your heart

Has come to a halt

As we think it has

You will see

When you turn around, this scene.

The hall under the doorless dome

Thick and heavy and ladden and sick.

With a thousand buzzing flies and rushing rats

Which carry pandemic sadnesses; the weight of the news

The mathematics of death, the imprisonment of life. And tumbles

Up the beautiful stairs, which are not yet beautiful,

A beautiful boy.

Beautiful, like a salamander in a fire

Over them is thrown a wash

By my watercolour brush

Dabbed in a warm shade of ochre

As I dip it in this glass of watery tears,

The paint begins to spread.

Verses grow in the curls of his hair

And behind his mask he mutters

For no reason at all

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”

Madness, and meaningless malevolent lies!

You will think,

And surely you will reach out to stop him

For you know where cheap drunkenness will wander

But your heart has stopped

And your path is set

So you may only watch

And follow step

And follow stride

And follow every maddening sign

As you walk into the library.

As you walk in the door will cry

Its screech a mourner's wail.

For It has seen hereby

Many a man awail

The fate that he as well will buy

With destiny at sale.

But you think not of destiny

It is for me to cry

For I sit in this room and weep.

The door it seems has stopped you

And frozen is your youthful guide

And as he waits stuck in time

Here by the library door

You may dare to explore

The dark and stretching corridor

That lies behind your back

It spreads out longer

Than it should

Staffroom walls lined with

Dreary posters of plays

Holding the ghosts of actors

Who died at the hands of law

And writers who suffered

Hallucinogenic, delusioning drug abuse related careers in medicine.

But that is not yet our odyssey.

Ours is to the lecture theatre

This ship is a classroom

With step by step row after curling row of chairs

Like an amphitheatre

On a ship to war in the east.

I will guide you to your seat at the back

Step, step, step turn.

And now you must close your eyes because it is dark and eyes see with light

And you do not know when the waves of flame will crash and it is better

To feel them and to hear them then to watch them devour you

Now sit in this seat

Silently and wait.

Your eyes must not look for light

And you must not feel or touch or hear or smell

Or know what sits beside you.

As you wait

We will go for a drive.

You will be in the backseat

And I will drive

We are passing by the sea

I have pulled down the window

And you can almost taste the salt

But your lips are craving something else are they not?

It is the afternoon, the light of the sky peers into the car

And you are afraid of its sight. You check to see if im looking and I’m not

My eyes are on the road.

You have worn your best shirt

The sleeves are rolled to reveal

Your thin arms where you have hurt

Yourself but no one will see.

You can smell your own perfume

And another’s. The mixing of scents.

Your soul is on fire and the fumes

Rushing into your body are sent

Into your arms and legs and your quivering lips.

It is summer and you are warm.

And restless to jump out of the car and take a dip

into the sea. But in the backseat beside you

Are the flames of the sun,

And the song of the wind and,

In tender taken breath the hush of the sea and

the soft cheeks of the beach,

And the lips where land and sea converge.

You are dying to touch the sand

To taste the salt.

Your heart is pounding again

And my tears are oceanic in flow

You must go. You must

We must park the car

Step out. Go back to school

But not to the library, you will be stopped at the door

You can not enter until your heart is a stone.

Drop all thoughts of the car

Close your eyes to the light

Do not smell the salt

You heart will stop

And you will be in school.

Here you are. Under the dome of no doors once more

And as you can see you are still not ready to enter the library

So take a walk. Out of the bluenness and greyness of the hall

Back to the bridge. Run past the souls of the dead, run.

Do not hear the sound of their lament. Do not look at their cards .

Lettered with soft words, in red ink

Do not listen to the sound of their playlists that belch

from the melting stereo of the inferno. Do not look at the balloons

In the shape of red hearts. Your heart must grow cold by now.

I see that you have not taken my advice.

You are landing from the bridge to a meadow

Red roses.

What do you know of red roses?

Do you know that not all roses that are red are born

As red roses? Some are white as pure as a newborn cloud.

And then they are painted. In soft dashes. With the brushwork of lashes

with the ink of red blood.

By lovers.

Desecrated, destroyed.

And as they burn under the bridge for their sins

The roses continue to bloom. Do not approach them.

There is more thorn than rose.

Remember that.

When you return to me

Do not bring the scent of these flowers.

Let me sit in this room where I can weep.

And while you walk off the bridge,

Past the meadow

Towards me

You will pass by the glory

That is the object envy

From martyrs who died at the battlefield

And moths who burnt in candles

Madmen who wander through the streets

Envy what you may dare to see

And if you do simply lift the lid

Of the yellow plastic dustbin in the corridor

And behold

A court of red roses

With a single white rose the queen

But again beware

There is more thorn than rose

And madmen are madmen.

That you should know

Turn through the corridors towards the stairs

The abandoned staircase where nobody went but two

The gallows my friend the gallows

Gallows made for two

Do not go to the gallows

And do not disobey

For you are not yet one for the folly of martyrdom

Ah but by the stairs stop

This room in the shadow of bougainvillaea

With the patio where cats relax in the sun

This is the literature room

You will see portraits of Elliot the Sage, and the madman Shelly and the poor sick soul of Keats.

Learn from them. Take warning! For this is why we read.

To dispel souls like you from the fate of the fools.

So look at these men and read on the wall their words and be not a fool.

You see. Yes, You may read.

What else do you see

Oh dear god

By god in the heavens,

By his heavenly decree, you have stumbled upon a tragedy

So you may watch my friend

Yet another mockery

Of The sorry fate of fools

Then at your name you stumble to the front

watching you are twenty two pairs of eyes

but you can feel the weight of only one

"Hi everyone" the first of all your lies

because to only one you wish to speak

"today I will read,'last sonnet' by keats"

"Bright star" you start and your voice goes weak

You feel growing in you a prickly heat

Your empty heart begins to dance and sing

Your gaze had fought but has now begun

To lower its battle flag to give in

Poor icarus flies too close to the sun

Finally your eyes suffer sweet defeat

Falling into the flame sitting in that seat

Oh you fool you fool

All my fear are true

Sonnets are the works of madmen and fools

You have stumbled you have fallen

Straight into the trap

You know not what you speak

You know not what you have almost seen

I have saved you from seeing the face of the flame

The flame is still a flame

Not a face not a face

If you truly had seen

You too would be here

With me in this room where I may weep

You have travelled and seen many things

And from these trials you have learnt nothing

You exist at once in four places in time

In the car by the sea stuck with the flames of the sun by your side

In the lecture theatre waiting for the waves of flame to arise

In the literature room about to burn your eyes

And each time you have been saved moments before the flames

You have repeated the folly of those before you

And you will repeat them again. So go my salamander son

Go back to the youth in the library and watch with him his foolery

Go my salamander son

Make my grief your friend

And I will sit here far away

In this room where I can weep.

Part 3

Literature room

My eyes are moths and they await

Their blissful burning brilliant end

Now it is time they meet their fate

Onto burning beauty descend

Lecture theatre

My eyes are closed but I can hear

Deep In my heart the waves of fear

My hand I drop down to my side

A softer hand grabs onto mine

The car by the sea

The car has stopped beside the sea

The smell of salt fills into me

But with it comes from somewhere near

The musky scent of open hair

Library

“Sing in my sacred name

Salamander boy

Of fire birth

Rise and sing

Let the corridor loom

Let the evil flowers bloom”

A voice high and mighty

As if washed in infants blood

Addresses from above

Broken is the doorless dome

Through it i Can see my home

As i stand before the library

The heavens are to speak to me

“Your fate awaits. you can not escape

All mountains turn to sea

And so will you, oh crescent child

You too shall face your fate

Your heart is warm

For although your eyes know not

Your heart is soon aware.

What in that golden room awaits

So go and make life out of fate“

The library is silent.

As libraries are often said to be

Of course it is whispering to me

But the voices are drowned out

By the foamy thoughtless joy of seeing

A sunlit hall and rack after rack of books.

One wall is a series of window after window

And I can't see them but all god's angels are sitting on the window sills

Watching me

As if adam is to fall again

(And how do adam’s sons fall

But by falling in love?)

What are the angels here to watch?

Why did they follow me today?

I am here by accident, or fate

With every click of my shoe against the floor the heavens are alerted

The angels push their marble eyes against the window panes

I slide into a row by accident or fate.

It is dark here

The rays of the sun have pulled the curtains

I am hugged by the shadow of the bookshelves

And pressed against a rack

It is dark here,

I slide out a book and look it at it

Then open

Then read

The shadows hold me tighter

It is darker here.

I am alone.

The angels watch from outside

The seraphs too

The ceiling dislodged from the sky

It is getting darker here

I am alone

My mind is pressed hard

A pandemic is rapping at my head

I bite my lip behind my mask

No one enters my loneliness

Gardens in the mind come to bloom

And give birth to dead babies

It is so dark in here

What do the angels watch

How do they even see?

The ceiling is going to fall on me

And the shadows will crush my ribs

The dead babies will bellow

And their mothers will wail

Oh hello.

Brown eyes,

Black mask

. By accident or fate

Mask slides off

Then pulled off

Pink lips curl and say in a stiff smile

‘I said hello”

At the crease of the pink sea

And black space

There is a mole

Hello

Perfume glides

Leaving behind a trail of candle warmth

And it is a little less dark.

The angels smile and leave with the seraphs

And the heavens sigh a sigh of relief

Fate has made its mistakes

Epilogue

Literature room

In burning death it finds its place

My gaze descends onto her face

Lecture theatre

In my hands I hold her hand

The darling moon falls to the land

Car by the sea

I turn my face and see her near

From darkness time and space appear

It is the same room

The same shade of the afternoon

The room of six windows

A desk by the window

And beyond it

Another room

Another shade of the afternoon

And a face

Brown eyes. Black mask

My eyes are whirlpools and all falls in.

This is not a room to weep in.

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