Postcard from Kashmir by Agha Shahid Ali
Postcard from Kashmir
Agha Shahid AliKashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat four by six inches.I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.This is home. And this the closest
I’ll ever be to home. When I return,
the colors won’t be so brilliant,
the Jhelum’s waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love
so overexposed.And my memory will be a little
out of focus, it in
a giant negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.
MARGINALIA
There are people to send out postcards to. I keep forgetting.
I miss the days when people still write to one another.
ABOUT AGHA SHAHID ALI
A Kashmiri American Muslim, Agha Shahid Ali is best known as a poet in the United States and identified himself as an American poet writing in English. Ali wrote nine poetry collections and a book of literary criticism (T.S. Eliot as Editor, 1986), as well as translated a collection of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry (The Rebel’s Silhouette, 1992) and edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (2000), a collection of ghazals (a Persian poetic form employing repetition, rhyme,… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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