Poem: Invisible Gnomes

God hath made these valleys wild,

streams that flow to eternal bliss,

and the birds are ever on wings;

everything by the time in thy presence,

is slipping away from our hands,

by the day to arise without a song:

for nothing in silence is hid from thee,

that in such reverence of thy sanctity,

this wall of our shared benevolence

makes me wonder at who I am;

but you to myself a stranger

in whose company by the common grave

this world is of another land,

of our promised heaven,

long expired in antiquity of some ancient folks,

whom, they say, have hardly ever existed,

where by a natural deity in the making,

they are still trying to make me believe.

[Naveed Khalid]