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?