Search results | The Beloved Witness

Title: Of it all
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Description: typed draft of "Of it All"
Type of item: journal, notes
Categories: exile
Full Text: GHAZAL for Anthony Lacavaro I say This, after all, is the trick of it all when suddenly you say, "Arabic of it all." / After Algebra there was Geomeftry——and then Calculus—— But I'd already failed the arithmetic of it all. White men across the U.S. love their wives‘ curries—- I say 0 No! to the turmeric of it all. "Suicide represents . . . a privileged moment. Then what keeps you——and me--from being sick of it all? The telephones work, but I'm still cut off from you. ...
PID: HamiltonShahid:417

Title: True subject (The poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz) [essay]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1990, 2012-06-13
Type of item: journal article, essay
Categories: exile, translation
Full Text: GRAND STREET This etlmocentrism is not just visible in attitudes to- wards the Middle East; it is visible, quite clearly, in atti- tudes towards the entire Muslim world—a fact that may help explain why The True Subject (Princeton University Press, 1988), Naomi Lazard’s excellent translations of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry, has been virtually ignored. A hand- some bilingual edition (the Urdu calligraphy by Ashfaq Ahmed is truly elegant), The True Subject is part of Prince- ton University Press’s ...
PID: HamiltonShahid:20

Title: Postcard from Kashmir [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1979-10
Type of item: poetry, manuscript – poem, Lyric 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: Houses [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1985-05-08
Type of item: poetry, manuscript – poem, Lyric 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: MFA thesis (selected pages) [thesis]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 1981-03
Type of item: prose, poetry, manuscript – thesis
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: Postcard from Kashmir [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 2012-06-12
Type of item: poem, poetry, Lyric 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: Call [poem]
Author: Agha, Shahid Ali, 1949-2001
Date: 2012-07-11
Type of item: poetry, poem, Lyric 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