Dear Shahid, I am writing to you from your far-off country. Far even from us who live here. Where you no longer are. Everyone carries his address in his pocket so that at least his body will reach home.

Rumours break on their way to us in the city. But word still reaches us from border towns: Men are forced to stand barefoot in snow waters all night. The women are alone inside. Soldiers smash radios and televisions. With bare hands they tear our houses to pieces.

You must have heard Rizwan was killed. Rizwan: Guardian of the Gates of Paradise. Only eighteen years old. Yesterday at Hideout Café (everyone there asks about you), a doctor - who had just treated a sixteen-year-old boy released from an interrogation centre - said: I want to ask the fortune-tellers: Did anything in his line of Fate reveal that the webs of his hands would be cut with a knife?

This letter, insh'Allah, will reach you for my brother goes south tomorrow where he shall post it. Here one can't even manage postage stamps. Today I went to the post office. Across the river. Bags and bags - hundreds of canvas bags - all undelivered mail. By chance I looked down and there on the floor I saw this letter addressed to you. So I am enclosing it. I hope it's from someone you are longing for news of.

Things here are as usual though we always talk about you. Will you come home soon? Waiting for you is like waiting for spring. We are waiting for the almond blossoms. And, if God wills, O! those days of peace when we all were in love and the rain was in our hands wherever we went.

Notes: This poem made me go in search of a poem I wrote one night four years ago on Kashmir. I am yet to find it but it will be posted here when I find it.

I

When he dances of meeting Beatrice that first time, he is a youth,his body has no real language, and his heart understands nothing of what has started. Love like a summer rain after drought, like the thin cry of a read-tailed hawk, like an angel sinking its teeth into our throat. He has only beginner steps to tell of the sheen inside him.The boy Dante sees her first with the absolute love possible only when we are ignorant of each other,Arm across his face,he runs off. Years go by.

II

The next dance is about their meeting again. He does an enchainement around her. Beatrice's heavy hair is dark and long. She watches with the occhi dolci. His jumps are a man's jumps. His steps have become the moves of a dancer who understand the dance. A man who recognizes the body's greed.She is deep in her body's heart. He is splendid.She is lost and is lead away by the aunt.Her family is careful after that. She goes by in a carriage. He raises on his toes, port de bras, his eyes desperate. Then she is at an upstairs window of the palace. He dances his sadness brilliantly in the moonlight below on the empty piazza,concentrating. She moves the curtain a little to the side, and he is happy. It's a dream we all know, the perfection of love that is not real. There is a founatin behind him.

III It is a few years later and they are finally in his simple room. His long dance of afterward is a declaration of joy and of gratitude and devotion. She dances strangely, putting on her clothes. A delicate goodbye. Her soul is now free from that kind of love. He stands motionless, bewildered, watching her go, Then dances his grief wonderfully.

IV We see Dante as an old man. He is a dancer who can manage only the simple steps of the beginning. He dances the romance lost, the love that never was,and the great love missed because of dreaming. First position, entrechat, and the smallest jumps. The passionate quiet. The quieter and the strongest. The special sorrow of a happy, imperfect heart that finally knows well how to dance. But does not.

I love you
because the Earth turns round the sun
because the North wind blows north
sometimes
because the Pope is Catholic
and most Rabbis Jewish
because winters flow into spring
and the air clears after a storm
because only my love for you 
despite the charms of gravity
keeps me from falling off the Earth
into another dimension
I love you 
because it is the natural order of things
I love you 
like the habit I picked up in college
of sleeping through lectures
or saying I'm sorry
when I get stopped for speeding
because I drink a glass of water
in the morning
and chain-smoke cigarettes
all through the day
because I take my coffee Black
and my milk with chocolate
because you keep my feet warm
through my life a mess
I love you 
because I don't want it 
any other way
I am helpless
in m love for you
It makes me so happy
to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
locking me in an echo chamber
where your voice reverberates
through the four walls 
sending me into spasmatic ecstasy 
I love you
because it's been so good
for so long
that if I didn't love you
I'd have to be born again
and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you
The Dells tell me Love
is so simple
the thought though of you
sends indescribably delicious multitudinous 
thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
because no two snowflakes are alike
and it is possible if you stand tippy-toe
to walk between the raindrops
I love you
because I am afraid of the dark
and can't sleep in the light
because I rub my eyes
when I wake up in the morning
and find you there
because you with all your magic powers were
determined that 
I should love you
because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you
I love you 
because you made me
want to love you
more than I love my privacy
my freedom my commitments
and responsibilities
I love you `cause I changed my life 
to love you
because you saw me one friday
afternoon and decided that I would 
love you
I love you I love you I love you