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 | ||||
