Image Credit –rawpixel.com

URDU LETTERS

We wrote Urdu on wooden tablets
scrubbed them with a grey lump
sooner under tap water it got a skin
then came lines drawn with a lead
pencil the rituals got thicker as the
pen dipped in an ink pot showed
glossy dots mocking certain letters
we flexed wrists keeping the quill
unabashedly closer even the heart
stopped beating for fear of losing
the balance on lines invigilating the
rebel inside who was also learning
English script on a paper notebook
there was a tacit agon between the
wine-drenched Urdu letters vessels
of a moth’s death over wax of rekhta
those kept tin boxes of Peek, Frean
biscuits from the shores of English
Channel where Empire was busy
charting cartography of languages
moth-eaten manuscripts of Arabs
Byzantine crucifixes and the English
themselves smarting from wounds
caused by the French stood stubborn
taking over our Urdu alphabets and
replacing them with covenants and
consonants our children rhymed
the wooden tablets yearned for palms
a quiet life of recession in backyards.

 

YOUR VISIT HAS A TOUCH OF AUTUMN

you pass by me straight
like a well-crafted sentence
does not bother even
the emptiness of a page
remain aloof adding
to its white presence
 

of intentions of an autumn
our leafless conversation
renders barks of words
of lost troves this way arms
portend lean branches
fall over a visceral veranda
subliminal elbows poke
shed a brown embrace.

 

ELLEN IN LAHORE

This time Ellen came to Lahore
rehearsed Urdu words with
an English lisp and cockney
shook hands with strangers 
dust informed her city’s mood 
gossips allowed ripping privacy
lavishes praise on a gratis food
she slurped milky drinks 
mooched spicy meat tut tut! 
roamed the Anarkali bazar 
vendors peered at her swan-like
neck and thin dress each bone 
neatly in its place as she
climbed The Royal Mosque
 (Midlands’ meadows
 windy hauls of megalith stones
 Cornish clouds farm horses
 (foiling Mrs. Moore of our trusted writer
 of her Majesty, Forster… ‘only connect’)
 dismounting steps she gave her hand 
 adjusted her scarf when I caught sight 
 of her ginger-white feet on the marbled floor
 the face of a courtesan flashed across
 there she covered her head after azan.

 

THE SHADOW OF A READER

The thought of leaving you kills me. Do you love me?
 

He is
across the hedge
behind a broken cope
over a border well-guarded
lurking in guts
pages pupils perverts
language he chooses to fix
there is a way for pain to settle
on soul’s own earnings
last time he pointed out
a lifetime sentence
the anthology
is still incomplete
not everyday clouds come
though rain is bounteous
he is not
no poem is repeated
a shred of doubt kills
stanzas in silence.