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

Rachel Cusk

The novelist on the “feminine non-state of non-being”
Merve Emre

Books

Renaissance Women

A new book celebrates—and sells short—Shakespeare’s sisters
Catherine Nicholson

Fady Joudah

The poet on how the war in Gaza changed his work
Aria Aber

You Might Also Like

Streaming the Polycrisis

Why have TV miniseries about catastrophe become all the rage?
Adam Fales

New York Anabasis

In praise of the return to the surface
Rachel Eisendrath

Notes on Affirmation

SFFA v. Harvard and the quest for acceptance
Thomas Dai

Subscribe

New perspectives, enduring writing. Join a conversation 200 years in the making. Subscribe to our print journal and receive four beautiful issues per year.
Subscribe