Rooms Are Never Finished by Agha Shahid Ali

Author:Agha Shahid Ali
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

A Secular Comedy

1. Heaven

Heaven’s lovesick Mediterranean blue

paper (parchment thickened to sky to hide His

loneliness) now peels to reveal what’s left of

all that was Heaven.

I, Earth’s ghost, am here where the windows, broken,

still reveal that He has learned nothing from His

errors, clouds in cobwebs on ceilings, shredded

wings in the corners.

“Vanished days, how,” Gabriel says, “we miss them.”

Drink, for even God shall not remain. Satan’s

voice? His voice preserved here till now? And perfect?

Who’d dare sing after

such a bitter melody? God is voiceless,

missing passion. All of His hands lie broken.

This is death? This fire of separation?

This is survival?

Songs I know! What unfinished pain that leads to

ghosts has brought me here, what unfinished business?

Empty, only wilderness veined inside me,

I, with no shadow?

Even You don’t give me a shadow: Your Light—

all the lights of Heaven—are dimmed tonight. Is

this the anniversary—Love’s expulsion—

Night of the Fallen

Angels? Who will sing now? Was there just poison

or some grief in You when he fell through Chaos—

Your Abyss—for nights, and his mad wings, raging,

deafened the soundproof

halls of Heaven? What is apart from legend?

But He doesn’t answer. He lets His Light go

out completely. And I am left without a

chance of a shadow.

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