I dream about my ancestors in Arabic,
who planted stories in sands and pearls
wrote love tales on fronds of fig trees
danced in Oasis and left me wondering.

I talk in my father’s language
chewed with betel leafs
and sung with tapering candles
before and after the Mutiny—
people were hanged in words
expressions were concealed in letters
streets were lonely and long like the Urdu dirge.

Now I struggle with another one
one with which I swam all the oceans,
has double-edge teeth
it bites out of loyalty and betrayal
and makes me claim
the bastardised foreword of a vanity book—
so sometimes I mesh it
with my personal pronouns
sprinkle some home-grind spices
then words bob out of my grip
like a little child on a remote platform
while haggard goes the mother
so I am often
prisoner and custodian
straddles with its fortunes
falling and running
across the English Channel