Question

Why is mothers face fallen in poem migration

Answer 1

Migrations are always difficult:

ask any drought,

any plague;

ask the year 1947.

Ask the chronicles themselves:

if there had been no migrations

would there have been enough

history to munch on?

Going back in time is also tough.

Ask anyone back-trekking to Sargodha

or Jhelum or Mianwali and they’ll tell you.

New faces among old brick;

politeness, sentiment,

dripping from the lips of strangers.

This is still your house, Sir.

And if you meditate on time

that is no longer time –

(the past is frozen, it is stone,

that which doesn’t move

and pulsate is not time) –

if you meditate on that scrap of time,

the mood turns pensive

like the monsoons

gathering in the skies

but not breaking.

Mother used to ask, don’t you remember my mother?

You’d be in the kitchen all the time

and run with the fries she ladled out,

still sizzling on the plate.

Don’t you remember her at all?

Mother’s fallen face

would fall further

at my impassivity.

Now my dreams ask me

If I remember my mother

And I am not sure how I’ll handle that.

Migrating across years is also difficult.