1

When you leave sunlight is a platter of orange shreds

beneath trees sparrows make a memorial of departure

an empty car shows that legs have a project.

2

Freed from winter’s freaks February evenings relax winds

berries mixed with cigarette stubs footpaths are canvases

on which midday sun illuminate girls’ skimpy outfits.

3

In the distance a company of crows cuddle in thick feathers

the black acacia is not a metaphor for their intentions

but they fly like writers searching logic between passages—

4

Meanwhile I made mental mess of choices county took

in 1989 television started explaining defanging revolutions

finally we visited Mughal’s prisons inside the Fort.

5

Why bother? Urdu ghazals speak too much of love

dark voluptuous concubines repeat Persian couplets

their shadows simmer over Lahore’s skyscrapers.

6

How an elegist submits tears to pages? How people roll

in black coverings, speculation has a history of its own

“lament but do not say things you cannot”.

7

The dead only rise when poetry shakes their skeletons in graves

on ponds of The Royal Mosque souls run a parliament after Allahu Akbar pigeons are a subdued army on feet.

8

Old men settle on straw mattress adjusting in rows

cordoned by verses their faces are stoned in reluctance

the young laugh for kites cradling on sky.

9

Sedated by low clientele The Dancing Girl Bazaar is silent

all night bodies stretch for numerous angles

language confines to stares on sitar’s strings and stasis.

10

In prosaic postures beggars eat from soiled hands

half-evolved grief is a text in ten fingers and two arms,

red buses churn an unending chorus of arrivals.