Farewell

I read this poem when I was 13 years (I think). Back then the world was a newer place. I think I had also prayed and fervently hoped Agha Shahid Ali's boat would capsize and he'd drown in the lake with porcelain waves and that would save me from reading such incomprehensible poems as school texts. Alas, my teenage prayers weren't answered and it eroded my occasional faith in God who was called on for life-death situations a 13 year old faced: like getting the window seat on the bus to school.

I am being rowed through Paradise in a river of Hell:
Exquisite ghost, it is night.

The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves.
It is still night. The paddle is a lotus.
I am rowed- as it withers-toward the breeze which is soft as
if it had pity on me.

If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn't
have happened in the world?

I'm everything you lost. You won't forgive me.
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive.You can't forgive me.
I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.

Today, as I read the poem I realize Mr. Ali was way smarter. He wrote and trapped my life in those lines; and to find them today brings me face to face with the deep chasm that has grown and swallowed up the simplicities irredeemably. Of the changes twelve years can bring? Yes. It's suddenly too complicated for any God to help now. Well done Mr. Ali!

Thanks DT for bringing this poem back :). And the rest of the poem is here.