Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles
……………………………..— Robert Browning, “Love Among the Ruins”
A Postcard from Tehran
bed-bruised I opened eyes on pellucid puddles
after the last night’s rain, the lissome branches
of juniper swayed rather edited by the wind
picking like a pen on a page makes me jot down
over a cup of tea, a well-earned security strip
by the news that a friend in Tehran had died,
we shared Hafiz, set to collaborate on an exegesis
on Rumi, talked in Farsi on the phone, our lingual
consanguinity, an elongated cadence on the tongue,
like moosiqi, other guttural Arabic sounds softened,
last summer, he sent me a postcard from Isfahan
peach blossoms in umbrous orchids, the clouds
returning like aerial strikes, as if skies missed
them over there under shapeless rubble, like
stanzas abandoned in despair, smoked eyes
a parental congregation of school girls
bombed, moist but unyielding, and the world
disputes what if a false flag!
crepuscular hues around mountains ringed by
a halation halo, people stick to their tasks, burials
break the monotony, on viridescent slopes
a few sheep grazing, come home.
by Rizwan Akhtar, Dr.
Institute of English Studies
Punjab University
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