How did the Enemy love you--with earth? air? and fire?
He held just one thing back till he got even: the rain.
In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other's
reflections.
Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like this
centuries later in this country
I have stitched to your shadow?
1
From tomb to tomb,
I chew the ash of prayers.
Won’t poetry happen to me?
My friend’s grandfather,
hoarder of regrets,
cautions: Those Muslim butchers:
Be careful, they stab you in the back.
I lost my beloved Lahore.
3
The streets light up
with the smiles of beggars.
Words fail me,
4
I carry the beggar-woman’s hunger
in my hand
5
The bootblack brushes my shoes:
Does my heart beat in my feet?
His knuckes carry the memory
of this city.
My shoes shine like death
6
Believe me,
he sat here in this dirt corner
winter and summer, winter, summer.
7
A safe distance of smells.
The restaurant airconditioned,
I drink my beer.
1
Between two saints he shares the earth,
Mohammad Shah Rangeele
(evoked in monsoon khayals).
The beggar woman kisses the marble lattice,
sobs and sobs on Khusro’ pillars.
In a corner Jahanara, garbed in the fakir’s grass,
mumbles a Sufi quatrain.
2
Suffering has its familiar patterns:
3
I’ve learnt some lessons the easy way:
I’ve seen so many, even a child somewhere,
his infant bones hidden forever.
4
These are time’s relics, its suffered epitaphs:
my well-fed skin
. . . letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins