Search results | The Beloved Witness

Title: Call [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 2012-07-11
Type of item: poetry
Categories: abandonment, exile, telephone
Full Text: A Call I close my eyes. It doesn't leave me, the cold moon of Kashmir which breaks into my house and steals my parents’ love. I open my hands: empty, empty. This cry is foreign. "When will you come home?" Father asks, then asks again. The ocean moves into the wires. I shout, "Are you all happy?" The line goes dead. The waters leave the wires. The sea is quiet, and over it the cold, full moon of Kashmir. 54
PID: HamiltonShahid:19

Title: Dacca gauzes [poem] (1983 draft, "Reading Dorian Gray in Kashmir")
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1983, 2013-12-01
Type of item: poetry
Categories: ancestors, textiles, colonialism, family
Full Text: Reading Dorian Gray in Kashmir . . . for a whole year, he sought to accumulate the most exquisite specimens . . . of textile and embroidered work . . . the Dacca gauzes, that from their transparency, are known in the East . . . --The Picture 2; Dorian Gray Dorian Gray wore those gauzes from Dacca known as woven air, running water, evening dew, that transparent cotton a dead art now, dead for over a hundred years. No one can imagine, my grandmother says, what it was to wear, just to touch, tha...
PID: HamiltonShahid:27

Title: MFA thesis (selected pages) [thesis]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1981-03
Type of item: poetry
Categories: ancestors, exile, religion
Full Text: iii ABSTRACT A snow child from Kashmir, the vale surrounded by the Himalayas, the persona thinks of the snowmen, his ancestors, whose burden is heavy on his shoulders. He wants to enter Spring. But will springtime mean not only their death, their melting, but also his own? . In the streets of Delhi, washed by the monsoons, he explores myth, history, and language. Kali turns to snow in his dreams, and he wants to touch Durga. The gods become mortal, stabbed at their altars. The persona recogni...
PID: HamiltonShahid:34

Title: Houses [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1985-05-08
Type of item: poetry
Categories: exile, family, troubles in Kashmir
Full Text: HOUSES for Jon Anderson The man who buries his house in the sand and digs it up again, each evening, learns to put it together quickly and just as quickly to take it apart. My parents sleep like children in the dark. I am too far to hear them breathe but I remember their house is safe and I can sleep, the night's hair black and thick in my hands. My parents sleep in the dark. When the moon rises, the night's hair turns white in my arms. I am thirteen thousand miles from home. I comb...
PID: HamiltonShahid:22

Title: Dacca gauzes [poem] (published 1987)
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1987, 2013-12-01
Type of item: poetry
Categories: ancestors, textiles, colonialism, family
Full Text: The Dacca Gauzes . . . for a whole year he sought to accumulate the most exquisite . Dacca gauzes. ' — Oscar Wilde/ The Picture of Dorian Gray Those transparent Dacca gauzes known as woven air, running water, evening dew: a dead art now, dead over a hundred years. "No one now knows," my grandmother says, “what it was to wear or touch that cloth." She wore it once, an heirloom sari from her mother's dowry, proved genuine when it was pulled, all six yards, through a rin...
PID: HamiltonShahid:28

Title: Dacca gauzes [poem] (undated draft, "Reading Dorian Gray in Kashmir")
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Type of item: poetry
Categories: ancestors, textiles, colonialism, family
Full Text: The Decca Gauzes . . . for a whole year he sought to accumulate the most exquisite 0 0 0 m.CCa. 8311265, 0 o 0 —-The Picture gg Dorian Gray Not only Dorian Gray but many aristocrats of Europe wore those transparent Dacca gauzes known as woven air, running water, evening dew. A dead art now, dead over a hundred years. "No one can imagine," my grandmother says, "what it was to wear or touch that cloth." She wore it once, an heirloom sari from her mother's dowry, proved ...
PID: HamiltonShahid:35

Title: Postcard from Kashmir [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1979-10
Type of item: poetry
Categories: exile, letters
Full Text: Postcard from Kashmir "Kashmir shrinks into your mailbox, your home a neat four by six inches. You alwfys loved neatness, so a e inch i.‘h—aut-gundhod th my . (WK 30-9-n ' acme, a disénce is the closest you'll ever get. ‘when you retu.rn,.pof" ' u~JVV\ 1 the colours 119-91.’ 4% so brilliant, the-can-out-sonar a.a_i.‘La.'nt-'h'vleo the river never so clean, so Rﬁbultramarine. Things here are as usual, though we always talk of you; nﬂzpu. The snow isn&apo...
PID: HamiltonShahid:21

Title: Cracked portraits [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Type of item: poetry
Categories: ancestors, family
Full Text: Cracked Portraits My grandfather's painted grandfather, son of Ali, a strange physician in embroidered robes, a white turban, the Koran lying open on a table beside him. I look for prayers in his eyes, for inscriptions in Arabic. I find his will: He's left us plots in the family graveyard. =2‘? Greabgrandfather? A sahib in breeches. He simply disappoints me, his hands missing in the drawing—room photo but firm as he whipped the horses or the servants. He wound the gramophone to a fu...
PID: HamiltonShahid:33

Title: Postcard from Kashmir [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 2012-06-12
Type of item: poetry
Categories: exile, letters
Full Text: d from Kashmir > ‘i""ks into my mailbox, rl"e:'at‘four by six inches. on ~. ed neatness. Now I hold Himalayas in my hand. And this the closest to home. V/hen I return, 't be so brilliant, “Waters so clean, a lé. My love jsed. oiywill be a little e if; it tive, black till undeveloped. (for Pavan Sabyzzl) 29
PID: HamiltonShahid:23

Title: Country without a post office [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Type of item: poetry
Categories: letters, religion, troubles in Kashmir
Full Text: The Country Without a Post Office . . . lettera dent I27 aea/‘eat /2L'm t/mt lived zz/aa.’ away. —GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Again I've returned to this country where a minaret has been entombed. Someone soaks the wicks of clay lamps in mustard oil, each night climbs its steps to read messages scratched on planets. His fingerprints cancel blank stamps in that archive for letters with doomed addresses, each house buried or empty. Empty? Because so many ﬂed, ran away, and became refugees t...
PID: HamiltonShahid:26

Title: Tonight [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Type of item: poetry
Full Text: Tonight Pa/e /2a/234 I love? éealae t/xv Sbalimar — LAURENCE HOPE VVhere are you now? VVho lies beneath your spell tonight? VVhom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight? Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—" "to make Me beautiful—" "Trinket"—to gem—"Me to adorn—How tell"—tonight? I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates-— A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight. God's vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar—- All the archangels ——their wings fr...
PID: HamiltonShahid:32

Title: "Ghazal" [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1997, 2012-07-10
Type of item: poetry
Categories: textiles, religion
Full Text: Ghazal Pale loancls I loved beside tlae Sloalimar —-LAURENCE HOPE Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight before you agonize him in farewell tonight? Pale hands that once loved me beside the Shalimar: Whom else from rapture's road will you expel tonight? Those "Fabrics of Cashmere——" "to make Me beautiful———" "Trinket"——to gem—"l\/le to adorn———How—tell"——tonight? I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates— A refugee from Belief s...
PID: HamiltonShahid:150

Title: Ghazal [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 2012-07-10
Type of item: poetry
Categories: textiles, religion
Full Text: GHAZAL Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar -—Laurence Hope Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell tonight before you agonize him in farewell tonight? Pale hands that once loved me beside the Shalimarz Whom else from rapture's road will you expel tonight? Those "Fabrics of Cashmere--" "to make Me beautiful--" "Trinket"-—to gem-—"Me to adorn--How-—tell"-—tonight? I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates-— A refugee from pity seeks a c...
PID: HamiltonShahid:31