I walked through the broken pots, half-burnt dolls, ransacked clothes
The smoke filled corners make up for the unlit furnace
A slipper in mid-flight by where the door once must have been
Abandoned in haste as piety came armed with sticks and stones
I walked the narrow lanes, the soot rubs off the blackened bricks
Not unlike a lifeless coat of piety on hearts harder than stones
A would-be-bride searches for a missing pair of gold earrings
A man deliberates what is salvageable in a burnt down shop
I dust the trampled remains of a book and it seemed Holy
I kiss it and place it in a clean crevice and hurriedly depart
Lest I be tempted to know if it was a Bible or a Quran
Joseph would toil to spot eleven stars in these polluted skies
The blood soaked shirts in these ruins are not to deceive Jacob
They speak of perversity in hollowed souls till it hears nothing else
The one they try to avenge warned of the supplication of the oppressed
Beware of caravans that rescue the likes of Joseph from wells
By Ahmed