Agha Shahid Ali

Learning Urdu

From a district near Jammu, 
(Dogri stumbling through his Urdu) 
he comes, the victim of a continent broken 
in two in nineteen forty-seven. 
He mentions the minced air he ate 
while men dissolved in alphabets 
of blood, in syllables of death, of hate. 

'I only remember half the word 
that was my village. The rest I forget. 
My memory belongs to the line of blood 
across which my friends dissolved 
into bitter stanzas of some dead poet.' 

He wanted me to sympathize. I couldn't, 
I was only interested in the bitter couplets 
which I wanted him to explain. He continued, 

'And I who knew Mir backwards, every 
couplet from the Diwan-e-Ghalib saw poetry 
dissolve into letters of blood.' He 

Now remembers nothing while I find Ghalib 
at the crossroads of language, refusing 
to move to any side, masquerading 
as a beggar to see my theatre of kindness.