Lo, A Tint Cashmere!/Lo, A Rose

Uqab Sahib,

Kindly keep your comments to yourself. You make a mistake in assuming that the readers of Chowk agree with your viewpoints. Your comments are particularly inappropriate.

Dear Kiran and Nasah,

Its lovely to see your posts. It does get a little khutah on the other boards, doesn`t it? Do either of you write? I am actually new to Chowk, but am very happy to have found it.

Leaving Sonora

living in the desert

has taught me to go inside myself

for shade -Richard Shelton

Certain landsacapes insist on fidelity.

Why else would a poet of this desert

go deep inside himself for shade?

Only there do the perished tribes live.

The desert insists, always: Be faithful,

even to those who no longer exist.

The Hohokam lived here for 1500 years.

In his shade, the poet sees one of their women, beautiful, her voice low as summer thunder.

Each night she saw, among the culinary ashes,

what the earth does only through a terrible pressure-

the fire, in minutes, transforming the coal into diamonds.

I left the desert at night-to return

to the East. From the plane I saw Tucson`s lights

shatter into blue diamonds. My eyes dazzled

as we climbed higher: below a thin cloud,

and only for a moment, I saw those blue lights fade

into the outlines of a vanished village.

from A Nostalgist`s Map of America

Nasah: Thought nobody would ask. The board was dying; let`s keep the poetry flowing ladies and gentlemen.

Rehan, how about posting some other memories you have of the good poet?

SNOWMEN

My ancestor, a man

of Himalayan snow,

came to Kashmir from Samarkand,

carrying a bag

of whale bones:

heirlooms from sea funerals.

His skeleton

carved from glaciers, his breath

arctic,

he froze women in his embrace.

His wife thawed into stony water,

her old age a clear

evaporation.

This heirloom,

his skeleton under my skin, passed

from son to grandson,

generations of snowmen on my back.

They tap every year on my window,

their voices hushed to ice.

No, they won`t let me out of winter,

and I`ve promised myself,

even if I`m the last snowman,

that I`ll ride into spring

on their melting shoulders.

from The Half-Inch Himalayas

Nasah: Thought nobody would ask. The board was dying; let`s keep the poetry flowing ladies and gentlemen.

Rehan, how about posting some other memories you have of the good poet?

SNOWMEN

My ancestor, a man

of Himalayan snow,

came to Kashmir from Samarkand,

carrying a bag

of whale bones:

heirlooms from sea funerals.

His skeleton

carved from glaciers, his breath

arctic,

he froze women in his embrace.

His wife thawed into stony water,

her old age a clear

evaporation.

This heirloom,

his skeleton under my skin, passed

from son to grandson,

generations of snowmen on my back.

They tap every year on my window,

their voices hushed to ice.

No, they won`t let me out of winter,

and I`ve promised myself,

even if I`m the last snowman,

that I`ll ride into spring

on their melting shoulders.

from The Half-Inch Himalayas

Dear Kiran, Samina, Zehra

How about another poem of Agha Shahid Ali to sweeten the bitter taste of Indo-Pak politics on other boards

Dear Kiran:

Point well taken, sorry. You`re right. Let`s keep this board free of politics.

Dear Kiran:

Point well taken, sorry. You`re right. Let`s keep this board free of politics.

Attn: UQAB, Bapu etc.:

This is NOT a POLITICAL board, can you please take your political regurgitations to the zillion other pages on Chowk. This is for Agha Shahid Ali and his works. Is that CLEAR???????

Samina, thanks your selections are wonderful, I`ll post some more, too annoyed by these pseudo-political posters and postings at the moment.

Nasah, atleast aap to is board pay seyasat sey ijtenab karein!

Attn: UQAB, Bapu etc.:

This is NOT a POLITICAL board, can you please take your political regurgitations to the zillion other pages on Chowk. This is for Agha Shahid Ali and his works. Is that CLEAR???????

Samina, thanks your selections are wonderful, I`ll post some more, too annoyed by these pseudo-political posters and postings at the moment.

Nasah, atleast aap to is board pay seyasat sey ijtenab karein!

thanks Kiran, Nasah and Zahra

lets have another go...

A Lost Memory of Delhi

I am not born

it is 1948 and the bus turns

onto a road without name

There on his bicycle

my father

He is younger than I

At Okhla where I get off

I pass my parents strolling by the Jamuna River

My mother is a recent bride

her sari a blaze of brocade

Silverdust parts her hair

She doesn`t see me

The bells of her anklets are distant

like the sound of china from

teashops being lit up with lanterns

and the stars are coming out

ringing with tongues of glass

They go into the house

always faded in the photographs

in the family album

but lit up now

with the oil lamp

I saw broken in the attic

I want to tell them I am their son

older, much older than they are

I knock keep knocking

but for them the night is quiet

this the night of my being

They don`t they wont

hear me won`t hear

my knocking drowning out

the tongues of stars

from The Half Inch Himalayas

Sarwar:

``India-Pakistan Talks Collapse, No Joint Declaration``.

So, what else is new in Agha Shahid Ali`s beloved subcontinent.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Here`s a lighter side of Ali`s work though thought-provoking at the same time:

The Wolf`s Postcript to `Little Red Riding Hood:`

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.



From ``A Walk Through the Yellow Pages``

Here`s a lighter side of Ali`s work though thought-provoking at the same time:

The Wolf`s Postcript to `Little Red Riding Hood:`

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.



From ``A Walk Through the Yellow Pages``

Thank you Zahra and thank you Samina for Shahid`s poems.

Please post some more.

my turn, just bits selected from shahid`s ghazals.

``Let There be Light,`` He said. ``And the
music of the spheres.``
To what tune does one set The Satanic Verses, Angels?

I won`t lift, off the air, any wingprints, O God-
Hire raw detectives to track down the mutinous angels.
All day we call it wisdom but then again at night
it`s only pain as it somes from the darkness, Angels!

Do the dye their wings after FOrever,
tinting their haloes,
aging zero without Time, those
androgynous angels?

You play innocence so well, with such
precision, Shahid:
You could seduce God Himself, and fu *k
the sexless angels.



For Shahid too the night went ``quickly as it came``-
After that , O Friend! came the music of it all.

------
i`d pray for shahid but somehow it just doesnt seem enough.

rizvi