Six shared seasons

Since we are
    our worst enemies,
        is it any surprise

that barbed wire,
    watchtowers and searchlights
        keep neighbours apart,

border guards suddenly
    slug it out
        for no apparent reason,

families picnic
    willy-nilly, as they wait
        in visa queues,

and poor people are
    rounded up – undesirables
        or aliens or both.

All the time
    the year keeps rolling
        to its celestial schedule:

grishma's furnace heat,
    barsha, monsoon floods,
        sarat's mellow skies,

hemant's fresh harvest,
    mist over the fields,
        dew underfoot,

warmth of embroidered quilts,
    winter bonfires, snow on mountains,
        fog on the plains,

then every girl a beauty
    in vasant's vibrant amber,
        & flowers with humid lips

kissing the passionate bee.
    Six seasons to everyone else's
        four – from the Himalaya

to Serendip, & the Indus plains
    to the delta
        of the Ganga & Brahmaputra –

hold the whole
    of Southasia together,
        six shared seasons

making nought
    of borders & barbed wire.
        Nature as usual, is

prodigal with gifts & lessons –
    & as usual, alas,
        we take one & ignore the other.

~ Kaiser Haq is a poet, translator, essasyist and professor of Engish at Dhaka Univeristy, Bangladesh.