An Ant on a Bedspread

Lost ant on the bed, a cruel finger's game. Midnight's silence echoes her haunting question.

February 10, 2026

When it is not the time of year for ants to be seen
How come an ant, out of the blue,
Appears on the bedspread
In the vast terrain of the double bed
Wandering as if lost
Morose with solitude
Manifestly bewildered
An ant by herself
Unaware of her transgression
Of interrupting my reading
This helpless creature
Does not comprehend
To escape what agony I had picked up the book
Moving speedily
In one direction head on
She abruptly turns to another
And then to another
This is no longer a secret
That she has no clue of her destination
Or of her direction
My finger chases her
Like a god
And whenever it feels like
To be amused by
Her added panic
It can stand before her like a rock
And can compel her to change her direction
And run even more speedily
I, the sadist
On some slip of her
Or on being tired of the game with her
Would crush her under my finger
And at midnight
When sleep would decline to favor me
This finger would crawl forward
To a face
And halt halfway
And the midnight silence would resonate
How come an ant
Appears on the bedspread

Tanveer Anjum

Afzal Ahmed Syed is a contemporary Urdu poet and translator, known for his mastery of both classical and modern Urdu poetic expression. He is the author of the modern nazm collections (An Arrogated Past, 1984), (Death Sentence in Two Languages, 1990), and (Rococo and Other Worlds, 2000). Another collection of classical ghazals is titled (The Dark Pavilion, 1988). Syed has translated a wide and important body of works by contemporary poets, playwrights and novelists. He was the one of the first Urdu translators of Gabriel García Márquez and Jean Genet. His work has been widely published in leading Urdu literary periodicals such as Shabkhoon, Aaj, and Dunyazad. He currently teaches at Habib University.