Born Sayyid Sibt-e-Asghar Naqvi in Amroha, in what was then British India, into a scholarly Shia family. He began writing poetry as a boy, steeped in Persian and Arabic as much as Urdu.

He left Amroha for the new state of Pakistan and settled in Karachi. The town he left stays in his poems as a lost home.

Shayad, his only collection published in his lifetime, appeared that year — decades after he had begun writing, and after friends had spent years urging him to gather the scattered poems into a book.

Pakistan's president awarded him the Pride of Performance for his contribution to Urdu letters: recognition that came late, to a poet who had published almost nothing.

He died in Karachi that November. Most of his books — Yaani, Gumaan, Lekin, Goya, and a volume of prose — were published only after his death, and his verses later spread widely online, read by people born after he was gone.