hunger

I had poetry
for dinner tonight.
the gnawing inside
was not the stomach.

In the house next door,
a mother was telling her little girl -
Poetry doesn’t put food on the table. Perhaps I should meet
that little girl
i have seen her chasing her sister
on the cycle with her friends
in the evenings sometimes

The other day as I walked by
I saw her sitting under a withered tree
with a notebook on her lap
a pencil stabbed in her bun
staring at the lines on her palm.
I should have talked to her,
I meant to.
But then I heard her mother
politely asking me to call her
to finish her homework.
I should have said something. 
but I smiled a radiant neighbourly smile 
and went up to break the child’s reverie.

I think of her sometimes
when I read a good poem.
I wish to share it with her.
But all I have
is my old mother in the next room 
lamenting her old lament to an aunt
“Poetry doesn’t put food on the table.”
After some time, my aunt walks up to me
and asks me what I will have.
I barely hear her.
But after I have finished
Agha Shahid Ali’s old collection
I go ïnto that room of whispers
and tell them – “I am quite full.
Good night.”