Agha Shahid Ali

A History Of Paisley:

You who will find the dark fossils of paisleys 
one afternoon on the peaks of Zabarvan - 
Trader from an ancient market of the future, 
alibi of chronology, that vain 
collaborator of time - won't know that these 
are her footprints from the day the world began. 

(Oh see, it is still the day the world begins: 
and the city rises, holding its remains, 
its wooden beams already their own fire's prophets.) 

And you, now touching sky, deaf to her anklets 
still echoing in the valley, deaf to men 
fleeing from soldiers into dead-end lanes 

(Look! Their feet bleed; they leave footprints on the street 
which will give up its fabric, at dusk, a carpet) - 
you have found-you'll think- the first teardrop, gem 
that was enticed for a mogul diadem 
into design... 

...three men are discussing, between 
sips of tea, undiscovered routes on emerald 
seas, ships with almonds, with shawls for Egypt. 
It is dusk. The gauze is torn. A weaver kneels, 
gathers falling threads. Soon he will stitch the air. 

(The Country without a post office, 1997) 

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. 

Agha Shahid Ali

Tonight

    Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar

                         —Laurence Hope

Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight?

Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight?

Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—”

“Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight?

I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates—

A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.

God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—

All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight.

Lord, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken;

Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

Mughal ceilings, let your mirrored convexities

multiply me at once under your spell tonight.

He’s freed some fire from ice in pity for Heaven.

He’s left open—for God—the doors of Hell tonight.

In the heart’s veined temple, all statues have been smashed.

No priest in saffron’s left to toll its knell tonight.

God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—

I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.

Executioners near the woman at the window.

Damn you, Elijah, I’ll bless Jezebel tonight.

The hunt is over, and I hear the Call to Prayer

fade into that of the wounded gazelle tonight.

My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all?

This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.

And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—

God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.