Rizwan Akhtar

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The Other Side of Lockdown

On a tract of curtailed growth a few crows
hatch a conference brandishing noise as
the only privilege they are born apart from
spooking an occasional daytime walker
who utters each word with a care to ensure
flowers live in a water pot kept by a woman
bent on her window after peering in street
as many times as she could but not even
the dying dirge of a vegetable vendor not
the squeaking hinges of a cupboard in which
her old man keeps his pack of cigars sent by
yet another loner making his life in a country
where metropolitan police now sings songs
to keep people aware of the idea of audience
sooner there would be successors of this stage
taking care of lands and of cattle left to graze
without much intervention the grass is thicker
mower is waiting time to reap our silence.

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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.