Behind Birds are Poems
How birds choose to break the silence
dropping from leaves of trees themselves
so alone like unfinished sentences trapped
in the stasis of a fantasy unable to make its
way and just chirp to themselves which
in the case of others is insanity certainly
a theme that keeps them going unafraid
smarting from fogs rains and storms so
not being born with words is also a poem.
Library
evening flips its course
silence like an editor
siphons sounds living
inside ancient scrolls
I leave elliptical kisses on
elbows they are annotations
eyes veer over a dusty cover
a long embrace on chairs
in an ornate corner where
a black telephone whirs on
on the penultimate sentence
our hands pave way for a closure
behind huge ebony cupboards full
of tomes red black golden placed
unlike us distracted by call numbers.
RIZWAN AKHTAR’s debut collection of poems Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is published by Punjab University Press. He works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan.