TYou still haven’t called me a poet, Dear Sir,
and I’ve been at it,
this business of meanings, sometimes delayed,
selling words in bottles, at times in boxes.
I began with a laugh, stirred my tea with English,
drank India down with a faint British accent,
temples, beggars, and dust
spread like marmalade on my toast:
A bitter taste: On Parliament Street
a policeman beat a child on the head.
Hermaphrodites walked by in Saffron saris,
their drums eching a drought-rhythm.
The Marxists said,
In Delhi English sounds obscene.
Return to Hindi or Bengali, eachword will burn
like hunger.
A language must measure up to one’s native dust.
Divided between two cultures, I spoke a language foreign even to my ears;
I diluted it in a glass of Scotch.
A terrible trade, my lip service to Revolution
punctuated by a whisly-god.
Now collecting a degree in English,
will I embrace my hungry country
with an armful of soliloquies?
This trade in words continues however as
Shakespeare feeds my alienation.
Please note, Dear Sir, my terrible plight
as I collect rejection slips
from your esteemed journal.
– Agha Shahid Ali
Juvenilia 