On Easter Sunday, 26th March, 2016, a powerful bomb explosion rocked the populated Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in Lahore, claiming dozens of lives.
—with lines from Tomas Transtromer
I drive through the city, daily | |||||
hung in smog. | off pavements, men broom dust | ||||
like ghosts pluming through the morning light. | |||||
around me, the whole strength of the street swarms, | |||||
wants | power that remembers nothing, | ||||
nothing. | already I want to spurn each muck road | ||||
bodies jostled in each turning rickshaw | |||||
heads in each dim bus lined in a planetary light— | I pass open fields | ||||
I pass crowds, packed tight | I do not move | ||||
I pass a man hunkeredover a cow that hit his car | |||||
angered, he whets a blade, jerks her bulk down | |||||
tips the blade over her glinting eye’s black orb. | |||||
I close my eyes | my mouth locks like a double barrel | ||||
the seconds tick at my teeth | I see his neck buckled in my arm | ||||
I see this instant, always here, | a fist in my ribs | ||||