Beloved belligerence
And this prevailing forlorn
Strident are our streets:
“Anybody? Anyone?”
City is grief…
Its viziers have fled.
A few miles away
A burning prayer on her lips:
“Reham!”
It’s smouldering summer,
2016.
Another bleeding banner,
12 fell to vortex—
Somewhere in a tranquil hamlet
Near Dastgeer’s Shrine
A mad mother,
And her wild wails…
Years later,
They continue to pen pain
In a sulking state of seethe
Poet, stop faking odes!
That sophomore is long gone
—the one who used to inscribe
Those rhymes of
Romance
Now, love is ash
And ashen is our life…
“Dear pallbearers…
For God’s sake!
Don’t take him,
Too soon, too cold.”
They’re born to die—
Too young, too handsome
I saw a walking sorrow,
This fall,
Beneath the crimson Chinar—
Perhaps mulling:
Is emancipation that brutal to get?
Bud after bud,
Bead after bead…
70 years, perhaps, is some time, no?
I heard the father—
“He was God’s gift”—
On way to lower
His apple of eyes
Inside a blooming garden
Of resting dreamers
Behave!
This is Dungeon republic.
“He’s a threat to peace!”
“He incites violence!”
“He is enemy of the state!”
And that orphaned notebook—
“Aur kitna Lahoo...”
