On Barbed Wires Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

Wearing my poems on your weathered face,
On a weary, withered, ruin –on the soiled
Bvlgari perfumed bottle of fragrance,
A pacco-robanne or Azzaro of twenty years.

Your books were from London, -a manuscript
From Accra, beseeched copies on newspaper
Prints, piled up –and where once you could
Read Le Monde, or Khaleej Times, a Guardian.

They sell oiled confectionary ‘extracted from
The intestines and claws of chicken’, such is the use
Of the written paper. You can read a Tom Sawyer,
On a cup of hot tea, watching a banner, asking a fresh
Assault on reason. The lone book store is a visit to Harappa,
You would take your children, with a blind-man’s stick,
Telling them the Arabian nights, just before
When your eyes had not been blinded.

And that I had watched Greta Garbo,
Thirty years ago, in black and white silent movie, while
Learning French, and that how I had stolen books from
The British Council, -when the council was apolitical.

I am wearing a poem on your face, O great city-
And I am telling them that the Great Buddha had given,
A sermon under the Bodhi tree, not far away,
And I am telling them to collect the words on barbed wires.

Sadiqullah Khan
Peshawar
February 2,2014.

Postcard of Mall 1910, Peshawar @ Friday Times