Ghazal

Agha Shahid Ali

What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?

But he has bought grief’s lottery, bought even the rain.


Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.

For mixers, my love, you’d poured—what?—even the rain.


Of this pear-shaped orange’s perfumed twist, I will say:

Extract Vermouth from the bergamot, even the rain.


How did the last one love you—with earth? air? and fire?

He held just one thing back till he got even: the rain.


This is God’s site for a new house of executions?

You swear by the Bible, Despot, even the rain?


After the bones—those flowers—this was found in the urn:

The lost river, ashes from the ghat, even the rain.


What was I to prophesy if not the end of the world?

A salt pillar for the lonely lot, even the rain.


How the night raged, desperately streaking the air with flames—

To help burn down my house, Fire sought even the rain.


He would raze the mountains, he would level the waves;

he would, to smooth his epic plot, even the rain.


New York belongs at daybreak to only me, just me—

To make this claim Memory’s brought even the rain.


They’ve found the knife that killed you, but whose prints are these?

No one has such small hands, Shahid, not even the rain.

Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) was an Indian-American poet. His collection Rooms Are Never Finished was a National Book Award finalist in 2001.
Originally published:
July 1, 2000

Featured

Searching for Seamus Heaney

What I found when I resolved to read him
Elisa Gonzalez

What Happened When I Began to Speak Welsh

By learning my family's language, I hoped to join their conversation.
Dan Fox

When Does a Divorce Begin?

Most people think of it as failure. For me it was an achievement.
Anahid Nersessian

You Might Also Like

A Night’s Sleep

An insomniac’s lifelong pursuit
Vincenzo Latronico

An Unsettling Civil War Photograph

An image from the Battle of the Wilderness
Rachel Eisendrath

Do You Actually Have to Finish That Novel?

A critic considers the strange moral pressure we feel to read to the very last page
Michel Chaouli

Support Our Commitment to Print

Subscribe to The Yale Review—and receive four beautiful issues per year.
Subscribe