Next to Saffron cultivation in interest come the floating gardens
Of the Dal Lake that can be towed from place to place.
1.
I will die, in autumn, in Kashmir,
and the shadowed routine of each vein
will almost be news, the blood censored,
for the Saffron Sun and the Times of Rain
will be sold in black, then destroyed,
invisibly at Zero Taxi Stand.
There will be men nailing tabloids
to the fence of Grindlay’s Bank,
I will look for any sign of blood
in captions under the photos of boys,
those who by inches – after the April flood –
were killed in fluted waters, each voice
torn from its throat as the Jehlum
receded to their accounts and found cash
sealed in the bank’s reflection.
I will open the waves, draw each hushed
balance, ready to pay, by any means,
whatever the drivers ask. The tone
called Eyes of Maple Green
will promise, “I’ll take you anywhere, even
in curfew hours,” and give me a bouquet –
“There’s a ban on wreaths!”
2.
I will die that day in late October, it will be long ago:
He will take me to Pompore where I’ll gather flowers and run
back to the taxi, stamens – How many thousands? – crushed
to red varnish in my hands: I’ll shout: “Saffron, my payment!”
And he’ll break the limit, chase each rumor of me. “No one’s
see Shahid,” we’ll hear again and again, in every tea house from
Nishat to Naseem. He will stop by the Shalimar ghat, and we’ll
descend the steps to the water. He’ll sever some land – two
yards – from the shore, I, his last passenger. Suddenly he’ll age,
his voice will break, his gaze green water, washing me: “it won’t
grow again, this gold from the burned fields of Pampore.” And
he will row the freed earth past the Security zones, so my blood
is news in the Saffron Sun setting on the waves.
3.
Yes, I remember it,
the day I’ll die, I broadcast the crimson,
so long of that sky, its spread air,
its rushing dyes, and a piece of earth
bleeding, apart from the shore, as we went
on the day I’ll die, past the guards, and he,
two yards he rowed me into the sunset,
past all pain. On everyone’s lips was news
of my death but only that beloved couplet,
broken, on his:
“If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this.”
(for Vidur Wazir)
– Agha Shahid Ali
Juvenilia 