Translated from Urdu by Kathrine Sowerby
Desire grows everywhere — limitless, eternal —
but I am a grain of sand in this rich desert
full of everything that matters, there’s nothing
hidden — years embedded with issues & images
unbelievably vast but at times so minuscule —
caught on an intake of my breath — deeply
curious then to travel, be travelled through
carrying possibilities, the wish for many lives.
~ Khaled Javaid Jan
Dr. Khalid Javaid Jan is a writer and documentary filmmaker who was born in Lahore. He is the author of 5 books of poetry and 15 books on medical and political subjects. His best known poem is perhaps ‘Main Baghi Hoon’ (I am a rebel), which became a poem of resistance against oppression, resulting in Dr. Jan being imprisoned and tortured by the military regime.
Kathrine Sowerby is a Glasgow-based poet with a background in fine art. A graduate of Glasgow School of Art’s MFA programme and Glasgow University’s MLitt in Creative Writing, she has been a runner up in the Edwin Morgan and the Wigtown Poetry Competitions and received a 2012/13 New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust. Kathrine co-runs tell it ‘slant’, Glasgow’s poetry bookshop, and curates and makes ‘fourfold’, a pocket-sized publication.