Beyond the Ash Rains -- Agha Shahid Ali

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1858) Beyond the Ash Rains 'What have you known of loss That makes you different from other men?' - Gilgamesh. When the desert refused my history, Refused to acknowledge that I had lived there, with you, among a vanished tribe, two, three thousand years ago, you parted the dawn rain, its thickest monsoon curtains, and beckoned me to the northern canyons. There, among the red rocks, you lived alone. I had still not learned the style of nomads: to walk between the rain drops to keep dry. Wet and cold, I spoke like a poor man, without irony. You showed me the relics of our former life, proof that we'd at last found each other, but in your arms I felt singled out for loss. When you lit the fire and poured the wine, "I am going," I murmured, repeatedly, "going where no one has been and no one will be... Will you come with me?" You took my hand, and we walked through the streets of an emptied world, vulnerable to our suddenly bare history in which I was, but you said won't again be, singled out for loss in your arms, won't ever again be exiled, never again, from your arms. -- Agha Shahid Ali

There's something hypnotic about this poem - some reason that I've never
been quite able to put my finger on, which makes the landscape it describes
come so vividly alive. It's not just the individual lines, though some of
them are truly brilliant ("I had still not learned the way of nomads: / to
walk between the rain drops to keep dry"), nor the way, towards the end,
that Shahid invokes the conversational tone so perfectly ("won't ever again
/ be exiled, never again, from your arms.). It's not even Shahid's trademark
trick (learned from years of studying Urdu poetry) of using the most
beautiful, evocative words (monsoon, exile) so that to read his poems is to
taste the rich, full sweetness of the language.

No, there's something else about this poem. The sense, perhaps, of reliving
some ancestral dream. Of that moment when you first awake and can just sense
the images of last night's vision slipping through your fingers. It is a
testament to Shahid's amazing gift that his poems make you feel a nostalgia
for places you've never been to, people you've never met, all the lost
tribes of ancestors that you can suddenly feel aching in your bones.

Aseem.

A Nostalgist's Map of America -- Agha Shahid Ali

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1401) A Nostalgist's Map of America The trees were soon hushed in the resonance of darkest emerald as we rushed by on 322, that route that took us from the dead center of Pennsylvania. (a stone marks it) to a suburb ten miles from Philadelphia. "A hummingbird", I said, after a sharp turn, then pointed to the wheel, still revolving in your hand. I gave Emily Dickinson to you then, line after line, complete from heart. The signs on Schuylkill Expressway fell neat behind us. I went further: "Let's pretend your city is Evanescence - There has to be one - in Pennsylvania - And that some day - the Bird will carry - my letters - to you - from Tunis - or Casablanca - the mail an easy night's ride - from North Africa." I'm making this up, I know, but since you were there, none of it's a lie. How did I go on? "Wings will rush by when the exit to Evanescence is barely a mile?" the sky was dark teal, the moon was rising. "It always rains on this route", I went on, "which takes you back, back to Evanescence, your boyhood town". You said this was summer, this final end of school, this coming home to Philadelphia, WMMR as soon as you could catch it. What song first came on? It must have been a disco hit, one whose singer no one recalls. It's six, perhaps seven years since then, since you last wrote. And yesterday, when you phoned, I said, "I knew you'd call," even before you could say who you were. "I am in Irvine now with my lover, just an hour from Tuscon and the flights are cheap." "Then we'll meet often." For a moment you were silent, and then, "Shahid, I'm dying". I kept speaking to you after I hung up, my voice the quickest mail, a cracked disc with many endings, each false: One: "I live in Evanescence (I had to build it, for America was without one). All is safe here with me. come to my street, disguised in the climate of Southern California. Surprise me when I open the door. Unload skies of rain from distance drenched arms." Or this: "Here in Evanescence (which I found - though not in Pennsylvania - after I last wrote), the eavesdropping willows write brief notes on grass, then hide them in shadows of trunks. I'd love to see you. Come as you are." And this, the least false: "You said each month you need new blood. Please forgive me, Phil, but I thought of your pain as a formal feeling, one useful for the letting go, your transfusions mere wings to me, the push of numerous hummingbirds, souveniers of Evanescence seen disappearing down a route of veins in an electric rush of Cochineal." -- Agha Shahid Ali

For Philip Paul Orlando.

The first time I learnt Shahid was dying was in September 2001. As I sat
there shocked at the news (I had no idea he was even ill) I found myself
mouthing the last stanzas of this poem again and again.

Not just because it's a poem of his I love.

Not just because it captures so well who Shahid was, both as a poet (the
conversational style, the formal structure, the repetition of themes and
phrases in endless improvisations, the raw passion of the metaphors, so
redolent of the Urdu he loved) and as a person (his warmth, his sense of
humour, his love for Dickinson, his habit of quoting little gems of
poems with the most bizarre connections).

But because it expresses better than anything I've ever read the
impossibility of finding the right words for the death of a friend. How
each line you come up with is a lie because it's never enough, because
it never says everything that needs to be said. And how in the end, all
words are a betrayal, a way of selling out what we feel to the formality
of the writer's craft. This poem is the most touching I can find to mark
Shahid's second death anniversary (Dec 8th) because it is the most
honest - because it offers not consolation but the search for
consolation, because it throws up its hands and admits that it is not
enough.

Aseem.

[Minstrels Links]

Emily Dickinson:
Poem #92, There's a certain Slant of light
Poem #174, A Route of Evanescence
Poem #341, The Grass so little has to do -
Poem #458, The Chariot
Poem #529, If you were coming in the fall
Poem #580, Split the Lark
Poem #687, Success is counted sweetest
Poem #711, I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Poem #829, It dropped so low in my regard
Poem #871, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
Poem #891, A Doubt If It Be Us
Poem #950, The Cricket Sang
Poem #1294, The reticent volcano keeps
Poem #1328, You cannot put a fire out
Poem #1337, Ample Make This Bed
Poem #1347, In a Library
Poem #1382, Hope
#174, "A Route of Evanescence", is extensively quoted in today's poem.

Agha Shahid Ali:
Poem #961, The Wolf's Postscript to 'Little Red Riding Hood'
Poem #1129, Farewell

Farewell -- Agha Shahid Ali

Guest poem sent in by amulya gopalakrishnan

(Poem #1129) Farewell 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 jeweller'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 in 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 the 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 can'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? -- Agha Shahid Ali

The first time I heard of Agha Shahid Ali was at a reading about 9/11,
where Amitav Ghosh read this poem from " A Country Without A Post
Office'. "His name means 'witness' and that is what he has been," said
Ghosh.

But we do not witness things as they are. We witness them as we are.
Agha Shahid Ali's abiding themes were Kashmir, exile, loneliness, love-
and longing, always longing. The mythos of Kashmir, and the opulence of
Urdu poetry shaped much of his writing.

This poem, Farewell, is a shattering evocation of conflict. Of belief
pitted against belief, of memories and histories intertwined and
warring. A pity beyond all telling in the lines, 'They make a desolation
and call it peace'.  There is no attempt to resolve the implacable anger
that fuels such conflict- beyond a sense of bitter, bitter mourning. '
We cannot ask them yet, are you done with the world?'

And yet, what seeps through in this poem and all the others in 'The
Country Without a Post Office' is the unbearable wistfulness, the unsaid
plea of its final lines, 'If only you could have been mine- what could
not have been possible in the world?'

amulya

The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood' -- Agha Shahid Ali

Another guest poem submitted by Matt Chanoff:

(Poem #961) 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. -- Agha Shahid Ali

Ali died this week, at age 52. He was a Kashmiri exile, living most recently
in New York. He's apparently famous for introducing the Ghazal into modern
American poetry, where it's now common. The poem seems to me appropriate
this week, not only as a memorial for Ali, but for the comment it makes on
the vilified. The thing about Osama bin Laden and his ilk is that the evil
they do swamps any legitimacy. If there's something to think about how
Western (and Hindu) culture and politics constrict the possibilities for
Islam, or about how poverty and loss of culture lead young men to violence,
or about the the responsibilities that the world's only superpower may have
toward weaker nations, then these things are drowned out by the casual
murderers who act in their name.

Ali could have made this a trivial poem by being just contrarian and taking
the side of the wolf. Instead, he makes a stronger point by making the big
bad wolf human.

You can read about him at
[broken link] http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=128
or
http://www.salem.mass.edu/sextant/v4n2/keyes.html

You can read about the Ghazal form at
http://www.umr.edu/~gdoty/poems/essays/ghazals.html

In the Minstrels, Poem #748 by Faiz Ahmed Faiz was translated by Ali.

Matt.