The half-inch Himalayas by Agha Shahid Ali 1949-

Author:Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0819573833
Publisher: Middletown, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press ; Scranton, Pa. : Distributed by Harper & Row
Published: 1987-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

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A Wrong Turn

In my dream Tm alwaysin a massacred town, its nameerased from maps,no road signs to it.

Only a wrong turn brings me here

where only the noon sun lives.

Tm alone, walking among the atrocities,guillotines blood-scorched,gods stabbed at their altars,dry wells piled up with bones,a curfew on ghosts.

Who were these people?

And who finished them to the last?

If dust had an alphabet, I would learn.

I thrust my hand

into the cobwebbed booth

of the town's ghost station,

the platform a snake-scaled rock,

rusted tracks waiting for a lost train,

my ticket a dead spider

hard as stone.

37

Vacating an Apartment

1

Efficient as Fate,

each eye a storm trooper,

the cleaners wipe my smilewith Comet fingersand tear the plasteroff my suicide note.

They learn everything

from the walls' eloquent tongues.

Now, quick as genocide,

they powder my ghost for a cinnamon jar.

They burn my posters(India and Heaven in flames),

whitewash my voicestains,

make everything new,clean as Death.

2

When the landlord brings new tenants,even Memory is a stranger.

The woman, her womb solid with the future,instructs her husband’s eyesto clutch insurance policies.

They ignore my love affair with the furniture,the corner table that memorizedmy crossed-out lines.

38

Oh, she’s beautiful,a hard-nippled Madonna.

The landlord gives them my autopsy;they sign the lease.

The room is beating with bottled infants,and I’ve stopped beating.

I’m moving out holding tombstones in my hands.

39

The Previous Occupant

The landlady says he lived here

for years. There's enough missing

for me to know him. On the empty shelves,

absent books gather dust: Neruda. Cavafy.

I know he knew their poetry, by heartthe lines I love.

From a half-torn horoscope I learnhis sign: Aquarius, just like me.

A half-empty Flexsol in the cabinet:he wore soft lenses. Yes, Aquarians are vain.And no anthems on their lips, they travelgreat distances. He came from some countryas far as Chile.

She says the apartmentwill be cleaned by the 1st:

But no detergent will rub his voice from the airthough he has disappeared in some countryas far as Chile.

The stains of his thoughts still clingin phrases to the frost on the windows.

And though he is blinded in some prison,though he is dying in some countryas far as Chile,

no spray will get inside the mirrorfrom where his brown eyes,brown, yes, brown,stare as if for years he'd beensearching for me.

40

Now that he’s found me,

my body casts his shadow everywhere.

He'll never, never, move out of here.

41

Leaving Your City

In the midnight bar

your breath collapsed on me.

I balanced on

the tip of your smile,

holding on to your wordsas I climbed the dark steps.

Meticulous,

your furniture neatly arranged for death,

you sharpened the knifeon the moon's surface,polished it with lunatic silver.

You were kind,

reciting poetry in a drunk tongue.

I thought: At last!

Now I loiter in and outof your memory,

speaking to you wherever I go.

I'm reduced to my poverties

and you to a restless dreamfrom another country

where the sea is the most expensive blue.

42

My finger, your phone numberat its tip, dials the night.

And your city follows me,its lights dying in my eyes.

Philadelphia, 2:00 a.m.

All routes to deathwill open up, again,as the bars close all overPennsylvania:

The disco stills its lights.

My eyes dim,

then go ofipin the mirrors;

I swallow

the melting rocks in my glass,

looking for shortcutsby-passing death,

my skin tense withthe taxi-hour of loss.

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