Skip to main content

Poems lay scattered in the city landscape

Poems lay scattered in the city landscape—
lifeless bodies strewn after a blast.
I went picking them one by one—
faceless, headless, decaying trunks.
The ambulance sirens howled on the roads
transporting the dead to the morgue.
The burial was tough—
for want of space, two or, at times, three,
were laid to rest in the earth’s embrace.

I searched for the lost fragments,
the mutilated parts of my poems,to stitch them back in shape—
all sonics, alliterations, and tropes,
oblique, complete, and feminine rhymes were gone—
only an occasional pattern of vowels survived
clutching the depths of consonants—
the lingering syllables wailed like mourning women
and played a requiem of their own.

  • Born and raised in the vibrant heartland of Pakistan’s Punjab, Sibghatullah Khan grew up surrounded by nature’s sounds and sights. He cherished his interactions with birds and animals, letting those moments shape his youthful daydreams. Khan started crafting poems during his high school years, drawn to the art of words without any rigid adherence to one particular style. In his childhood, stories shared by his grandmother sparked a love for narrative in him, an affection evident in his writings today. He feels a deep connection with the works of Lawrence, Frost, Whitman, Emerson, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, and Thomas Mann. This affinity combined with the unpredictability of life has inspired him to explore a myriad of poetic and prose styles. In poetry, he finds joy in the limitless freedom of free verse while appreciating the resonance of past traditions. He is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad.