Poems

Life of the Imagination

So much is left to the imagination,
Dreams and their coming true,
The love once sought acquired,
Places visited that really do not exist.

It is tiring and full of ennui
For the body to feel no pain.
Only the mind reacts, argues,
Laughs and loves.  The body merely

Draws the map of the intellect’s
Fancy wanderings.  The latitude and
Longitude of an event on the
Horizon of possibility.  Cry,

The tears are scratch marks;
Laugh, the sound is echo to a profile,
Seen like some mist solidified into
A talking person. Only when love

Intervenes, much as the inevitable
Wall of all lives, do the bounds appear.
The circular logic of fancy reveals
The inner limit of body and soul.

Moeen Faruqi
First published in Poems from Pakistan, Oxford University Press