16 June 2020

Afzal Ahmad Syed ~ Tuesday, 16 June 2020

Light must have pricked my bowels like needles 

Putting to sleep all the days of the past year in a single grave 

By mistake the first day of the new year too was buried 

Now the contagion of dying is marking all the days 

~~~

From "Descent from Tel Za'atar *" 
by Afzal Ahmad Syed 

*Tel Za'atar: In Beirut in 1976, a Palestinian camp. (Poet's note.) 

From: An Evening of Caged Beasts: Seven Postmodernist Urdu Poets (Poetry from Pakistan) 

Selected and introduced by Asif Farrukhi 

Translated by Frances W. Pritchett and Asif Farrukhi 

Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999. 

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