When we remain the last speakers

When we remain the last speakers
of the dialect of damp decades,
who will listen to the cry of the sirens
blaring in the redrawn city?

The warm sky on the policed highway sags
like a woman’s eyes drooping from dementia.
The car radio hums Ghalib:
Never did they all get reincarnated as roses and tulips
What beauties must have been attired in earth
and forever disappeared from view.
The road and sky are one plane making it
impossible to breathe. The sirens
nail our hands together. How shall we reach
the perfume of the white hee posh?
Shall we too be left in want as Zauq who flew off from the
curfewed garden pining
for the reticent breeze?
It can’t be. Draw out our will
when the wounded sparrows hover in half circles
over the calligraphed roads of Khanqah
just past the domed grave of the emperor’s mother.
Draw out our will:

Let the assailants mispronounce our names
when they draw fresh gods from
the lakes of our ancient myths.
Our names must leave in the middle of poems
that they learn to walk past the barricades,
then fly past the fluttering flags,
earn the wrath of the new gods,
and disappoint the clever snipers
expectant on the barren hills.
On the fortieth anniversary of the lost summer
we will anoint someone to look us again
in the eye, and defeat us again that we never forget….