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First,
grant me my sense of history:
I did it for
posterity,
for
kindergarten teachers
and a clear
moral:
Little girls
shouldn't wander off
in search of
strange flowers,
and they
mustn't speak to strangers.
And then grant
me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn't I have
gobbled her up
right there in
the jungle?
Why did I ask
her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a
forest-dweller,
didn't know of
the cottage
under the three
oak trees
and the old
woman lived there
all alone?
As if I
couldn't have swallowed her years before?
And you may
call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only
reputation.
But I was no
child-molester
though you'll
agree she was pretty.
And the
huntsman:
Was I sleeping
while he snipped
my thick black
fur
and filled me
with garbage and stones?
I ran with that
weight and fell down,
simply so
children could laugh
at the noise of
the stones
cutting through
my belly,
at the garbage
spilling out
with a perfect
sense of timing,
just when the
tale
should have
come to an end.
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The Purse-Seiner Atlantis
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By
Agha Shahid Ali
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Black
Pacific. "Shahid, come here, quick." A ship,
giant lantern held in its own light, the dark
left untouched, a phantom‑ship with birds, no, moths,
giant moths that cannot die. Which world has sent
it? And which awaits its cargo's circling light,
staggered halo made of wings? The dark is still,
fixed around that moving lamp which keeps the light
so encased it pours its milk into itself,
sailing past with moths that cannot put themselves
out. What keeps this light from pouring out as light?
Beautiful in white, she says, "I'll just be back."
She goes inside. I fill my glass till I see
everything and nothing stare back at me, fill
me with longing, the longing to long, to be
flame, and moth, and ash. What light now startles me?
Neighbor's window. Turn it off, God, turn it off.
When they do, a minute later, I am--what?
Ash completely, yet not ash, I see I am
what is left of light, what light leaves me, what light
always leaves of me. "Oh, Shahid" (from inside
her voice is light), "could you light the candles, please?"
"Come back out, the ship is close." Moths, one by one,
dive into the light, dive deep to catch the light,
then return to keep the halo. Ship, what ghost
keeps you moving north? Your light is pouring flames
down your sides, yet all the sea keeps dark. What waits
for you beyond--seas and continents erased
from every map? The halo thickens. Yet what
keeps the sky untouched, so dark? She comes outside.
"Do you like the wine? I bought it years ago."
"It is the best ever." When I next look out
("Nothing lasts, of course"), the ship has disappeared.
The dark completes itself. What light now strikes us?
"Look, the phosphorus." It streaks the shore, it shines
green, bottle green, necklace darkened round the shore
where we now are walking by Time's stray wreckage
(broken planks,
black glass) while the waves, again,
repeat each rumor the sea, out there, denies
chilled necklaces, lost continents, casks of wine.
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Farewell
By Agha Shahid Ali
At a certain point I lost
track of you.
They make a desolation
and call it peace.
When you left even the
stones were buried:
The defenceless would have
no weapons.
When the ibex rubs itself
against the rocks, who collects
its
fallen fleece from the slopes?
O Weaver whose seams
perfectly vanished, who weighs the
hairs
on the jeweler's balance?
They make a desolation and
call it peace.
Who is the guardian tonight
of the Gates of Paradise?
My memory is again in the
way of your history.
Army convoys all night like
desert caravans:
In the smoking oil of dimmed
headlights, time dissolved — all
winter
— its crushed fennel.
We can't ask them: Are
you done with the world?
In the lake the arms of
temples and mosques are locked
in
each other's reflections.
Have you soaked saffron to
pour on them when they are
found
like this centuries later in this country
I
have stitched to your shadow?
In this country we step out
with doors in our arms.
Children run out with
windows in their arms.
You drag it behind you in
lit corridors.
If the switch is pulled you
will be torn from everything.
At a certain point I lost
track of you.
You needed me. You needed to
perfect me:
In your absence you polished
me into the Enemy.
Your history gets in the way
of my memory.
I am everything you lost.
You can't forgive me.
I am everything you lost.
Your perfect enemy.
Your memory gets in the way
of my memory:
I am being rowed through
Paradise on a river of Hell:
Exquisite
ghost, it is night.
The paddle is a heart; it
breaks the porcelain waves:
It is still night. The
paddle is a lotus:
I am rowed — as it withers —
toward the breeze which is soft as
if
it had pity on me.
If only somehow you could
have been mine, what wouldn't
have
happened in this world?
I'm everything you lost. You
won't forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in
the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive.
You won't forgive me.
I hid my pain even from
myself; I revealed my pain only to
myself.
There is everything to
forgive. You can't forgive me.
If only somehow you could
have been mine,
what would not have been
possible in the world?
(for
Patricia O'Neill)
Author's Bio
Agha
Shahid Ali
Agha
Shahid Ali was born in New Delhi on February 4, 1949. He grew up Muslim
in Kashmir, and was later educated at the University of Kashmir,
Srinagar, and University of Delhi. He earned a Ph.D. in English from
Pennsylvania State University in 1984, and an M.F.A. from the
University of Arizona in 1985. His volumes of poetry include Call
Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals (W.W. Norton & Co.,
2003), Rooms Are Never Finished (2001), The Country Without
a Post Office (1997), The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems
(1992), A Nostalgist's Map of America (1991), A Walk
Through the Yellow Pages (1987), The Half-Inch Himalayas
(1987), In Memory of Begum Akhtar and Other Poems (1979), and Bone
Sculpture (1972). He is also the author of T. S. Eliot as Editor
(1986), translator of The Rebel's Silhouette: Selected Poems by
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1992), and editor of Ravishing Disunities: Real
Ghazals in English (2000).
Ali
received fellowships from The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, the New
York Foundation for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation and was
awarded a Pushcart Prize. He held teaching positions at the University
of Delhi, Penn State, SUNY Binghamton, Princeton University, Hamilton
College, Baruch College, University of Utah, and Warren Wilson College.
Agha Shahid Ali died on December 8, 2001.
Source: : The
Academy of American Poets
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