You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea. Another city will be found, better than this. Every effort of mine is condemned by fate; and my heart is -- like a corpse -- buried. How long in this wasteland will my mind remain. Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look I see the black ruins of my life here, where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas. The city will follow you. You will roam the same streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods; in these same houses you will grow gray. Always you will arrive in this city. To another land -- do not hope -- there is no ship for you, there is no road. As you have ruined your life here in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.

Tonight it is raining over New York City. And towers of rain stand in the streets Between towers of light, and shatter Over your upturned face as it rises To the sidewalk among subway shoals.

Tonight a secret is being born. You hear rustling of hands Tearing open the envelope of What you know. At your feet Eddies of a scattered alphabet, A trace of ash left on your eye Lash by a sudden lightning flash.

Tonight something is opening Its wings among the fissures of Your scarred heart. You must Now find its name hidden in All these unread lines of rain.

The world is full of paper. Write to me. ~Agha Shahid Ali

Today evening when I saw a rain tree shaking its golden tassels in the storm-wind, I couldn’t but remember bangles on her hands closing over my eyes from behind.

Once around midnight, in a supermarket, an old man started questioning me in Hindustani. I couldn’t reply for my tongue kept tripping on stones, words of that world were hiding behind.

Last year in the mohallas of a city, a constant interrogative from strangers: have you returned? As I answered, “Yes, only for a few weeks”, I knew exile was a skin one cannot slough behind.

Behind a windscreen blurred by rain, when I saw her intimate, lovely Judas face kissing, I crossed the street yet her finely wrought dagger of betrayal stabbed me from behind.

From memory’s iron manacles, O Sashi, how will you yourself unbind, When that ivory painted trunk filled with all the keys you have left behind?