God is tulips        flaming on my palm in Urdu    
a wasteland greens in the frosted calm in Urdu

We cuddle the infant       suns and cool them
to persimmons—sugared sparks in Urdu                

Carbon burgeons into flesh and flamingos
when Khusrau sings to the atom— bomb in Urdu

A kingdom whispers through the sepia spell
a prosody of paan that spits       the Crown. In Urdu,

you and love become different         words as they
grow. I pluck the angry vowels we farm in Urdu

A harvest of blisters behind the skins of teeth
mothers slide us nigella and a psalm in Urdu

In the Languages box I check: Urdu (Pakistan)
once a Welshman cleaved Hindustan        ’n Urdu

Delhi dons its sables of cinder, history
its muslin the Yamuna pulls to yarn in Urdu

Winter leaves an elegy. A parable.
A petition. A list of their naams in Urdu

A spoonful of zam zam grows from this torrid
tongue—a colour, a sound, a promised land in Urdu