Daily Times

Alone in my condition

neither friends nor Fridays

the city of shades

exists in me

and gazing through metal

shafts

of view I rest confused

wherever I peer I see

a giant eye-ball

scrutinizing me.

I drop my eyes like

‘Pindi maidens to run

up against concrete and clay

that bakes me in.

Can spiders endure

their own webbing?

as the chill of uncertainty,

a church-bell tongue,

touches

me on a parched

oesophagus.

I exist.

Only in my city:

the poltroonery of

an ecaudated monarch.

The writer is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC