Shadab Z. Hashmi

Lahore

Later the tale

of the white Dev and brave Rustam,

the distant moon a mango pit

licked smooth by a day old goat.

A nightly

ash of whispered ledgers.

How much like the body a house is,

how much like revolution:

After endless stupor, endless spiral

stairways,

joints, marbled thresholds,

echoes, live currents running

through

walls, bejeweled

not yet bullet-proof.

Our elders became fruit trees

after they passed on

this country to us. They scent

the terraces and stroke

the roofs.

They say:

Breathe in

the scintillating saw dust

of the yet unbuilt.