Bibi, are you living?
When the snoring stopped
as you perched by the fire
with loving impudence you asked:
Bibi, are you living?
You listened awestruck to your Scheherazade,
her convoluted ancestral tales,
repeatedly embellished tales of
Salim and Anarkali, Layla and Majnun,
the knighted poet of the East,
the Bollywood tragedy king.
There you sat coiled, mischievously,
sipping hot salty tea –
green tea, you said,
though it was more dark Thames brown.
You crave it on the ward now
but they don’t have it here, of course.
Fear keeps me vigilant
in the uneasy stillness.
Anas Hassan lives in London. He is a strategy consultant and keen runner, and speaks French, German and Arabic. He studied history and international relations at Cambridge. His poetry has recently been published in The Interpreter’s House magazine