Call Me Ishmael Tonight by Agha Shahid Ali

Author:Agha Shahid Ali
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780393352047
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2004-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Air

Drink this rain-dark rum of

air column of breath column of air.

About Me

(after some lines Of Wislawa Szymborska)

I’m too close, too close for him to dream about me,

for he is held (he is al-Mustalim) about me.

Now the grace to disappear from astonished eyes!

Note how I possess this—love’s last!—theme about me.

Not so, my lord. “Seems,” madam? Nay, it is. O God!

I am too much in the sun. I know not “seems” about me.

On the head of each pin dance the fallen angels.

If only they would needle the Supreme about me!

I pull my arm out from under his sleeping head,

limited to my own form, my scream about me.

My ears catch the rustling of last wills torn to pieces—

The dead so poor, infatuated, teem about me.

Now Christ will never die so readily for you,

left nailed with His wounds’ sorry regime about me.

A house is on fire without my calling for help.

Like fangs in the dark, windowpanes gleam about me.

Elusively gay but not quite presently straight,

one is stone in his own forest stream about me.

On Doomsday God asked the Pure, “Why didn’t you sin?

Didn’t you trust the best (ar-Rahim) about Me?”

I read letters of the dead and am a helpless god,

their bad taste, their electrical steam about me.

Father of Clay, this is Shahid; I am become flesh—

No spirit dusts or will itself redeem about me.

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