Adrian A Husain
It is passing - so quickly
taking breath away
with every breath
A friend, intent on television
in a moment gone
civility and gusto
old world panache
head lolling all the way
to hospital
They will surely
ask
what became of us
when - and how - we went
windblown, sea-blown
leaf, grass
trickle of sand
rock
sea-anemone
sheer magic of it -
eyes agape, heads
at half-mast, arms fallen
Adrian A Husain was educated in England and Switzerland. He did his BA (Hons.) at New College, Oxford. He received a PhD for a thesis on Shakespeare and Machiavelli from the University of East Anglia and authored the critically acclaimed Politics and Genre in Hamlet (OUP, 2004). He is a winner of the prestigious Guinness Poetry Prize. A selection of his poems was published under the title Desert Album as part of Pakistan’s Jubilee in English series (OUP, 1997). His collection of sonnets titled Italian Window was published in 2017. His next collection of sonnets, Knife of the Tide awaits publication.