Penned while he sat by the Nile River, in North Sudan, Nadir Feroz’s poem “Doused” carries the themes of time, eternity, light, and mortality in its currents. Themes which are, perhaps inevitable in such a setting. That exotic and ancient setting is what Nadir first instills in the reader, before, like a prophet of old, he carries us into the present, and even into a hinted apocalyptic future which may lay beyond “as one by one the music and the magic may cease.”
Doused
On this wet winter evening,
I sit by the Nile,
soaking in the last few rays
as erstwhile sounds fill the air— oud and tambour
notes plucked and cast onto the waves.
I notice the many faces of man spread out before me—
tall to the verge of elongated,
somber to the threshold of shadowy,
expectant faces, uncertain if the second coming will mark an end
to this majestic flow, still lapping the same course
that delivered Moses in his basket to the Pharaoh’s castle.
These men perhaps know that they can be but silent spectators
as one by one the music and the magic may cease.
My soul is starved, as much for release as my body is from hunger.
There is thought for food,
but I seek emptiness, to simplify and single out
anticipation, passion, satisfaction; none sustains
the intensity to lock horns with the harbingers of another day
the way light continues where it left off –
the notion of eternity is euphoric much as it is daunting:
an evidence of the beauty in what laid around me
and a rude reminder of what lay beyond.
Nadir Feroz
A Tech/Pharma executive, Nadir has been writing poetry in both Urdu and English for over half a lifetime. He enjoys reading Ghalib and Alexander Pope. His work has appeared in PaperCuts Magazine and three of his poems have been reproduced as songs.
Beautiful; every time I read it, I get a new perspective. Still reading…and pondering
Love it!