Echoes in the Dust
A Free Verse Poem by Faraz Parvez
The road stretches beyond the bazaar,
where the air swirls with cumin and sweat,
where old men sip tea, muttering half-truths
about a country they no longer recognize.
A boy runs barefoot through the alley,
his kite a torn prayer against the smog,
his laughter—
a brittle thing
that the wind might steal.
The call to prayer ripples through the rooftops,
folding itself into the drone of generators,
into the siren of an ambulance
that no one hears anymore.
On the walls,
posters of missing sons—
faces that blur under monsoon rains,
names that dissolve
in the silence of waiting mothers.
A poet sits by the canal,
watching the ripples
erase his reflection.
He does not write tonight.
The city inhales its own dust,
exhales forgotten dreams.
And somewhere,
far from the din,
the Indus keeps flowing—
indifferent, eternal.
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