1
From tomb to tomb,
I chew the ash of prayers.
Won’t poetry happen to me?
Caught in the lanes of history,
don’t I qualify now?
I have even seen Allah in rags
extend the earth like a begging bowl.
2
The Two-Nation Theory is dead
But the old don’t forget.
In this city of refugees,
trains move like ghosts.
The old don’t forget.
My friend’s grandfather,
hoarder of regrets,
cautions: Those Muslim butchers:
Be careful, they stab you in the back.
I lost my beloved Lahore.
My friend and I are rather simple:
We never saw the continent divide.
3
The streets light up
with the smiles of beggars.
Words fail me,
for I need a harsh language.
But I’m comfortable
like an angry editor.
4
I carry the beggar-woman’s hunger
in my hand
as her eyes follow me to my poems,
follow me into the coffee house
where I’m biting into her,
eating morsels of her night.
5
The bootblack brushes my shoes:
Does my heart beat in my feet?
His knuckes carry the memory
of this city.
My shoes shine like death
as I wait at the bus stop
for Delhi’s dome of sweat
to break into a monsoon of steel
and rip my Achilles heel.
6
Believe me,
he sat here in this dirt corner
winter and summer, winter, summer.
This morning he wasn’t there
with his ancient beard
and his stretched-out hand.
The sweeper said he took him away
with the morning garbage.
7
A safe distance of smells.
The restaurant airconditioned,
I drink my beer.
Outside the beggars
laze in empty tins,
peeling the sun,
their used beer-can.
Waiter, get me another beer!
– Agha Shahid Ali
Juvenilia 