In this poem, Ashaq Hussain Parray retrieves the toil of hard labor coupled with expert artistry in an environment of bloodshed and grief that is weaved deep in threads like wounds destined to heal.
After a self-imposed suspension in our regular publication cycle, in solidarity with the silenced avenues of Kashmiri expression, Inverse Journal presents three timely poems by Ashaq Hussain Parray that meditate on the quality of being Kashmiri (and human) at the present and within a greater continuum of disproportionate and unresolved histories. As a doctoral candidate in Translation Studies specializing in the translation of Urdu poetry into English, Parray brings us these three poems that exhibit the grace of the Ghazal and the couplet, while crafting out the poetic formulations rooted in the Kashmiri language as it ventures out into the world of English literature, maintaining intact a poetic sensibility that is identifiably Kashmiri.