Snow on the Desert // Agha Shahid Ali

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

“Each ray of sunshine is seven minutes old,”  

Serge told me in New York one December night.

“So when I look at the sky, I see the past?”  

“Yes, Yes," he said. “especially on a clear day.”

On January 19, 1987,

as I very early in the morning

drove my sister to Tucson International,

suddenly on Alvernon and 22nd Street  

the sliding doors of the fog were opened,

and the snow, which had fallen all night, now  

sun-dazzled, blinded us, the earth whitened

out, as if by cocaine, the desert’s plants,  

its mineral-hard colors extinguished,  

wine frozen in the veins of the cactus.

                    *   *   *

The Desert Smells Like Rain: in it I read:  

The syrup from which sacred wine is made

is extracted from the saguaros each  

summer. The Papagos place it in jars,

where the last of it softens, then darkens  

into a color of blood though it tastes

strangely sweet, almost white, like a dry wine.  

As I tell Sameetah this, we are still

seven miles away. “And you know the flowers  

of the saguaros bloom only at night?”

We are driving slowly, the road is glass.  

“Imagine where we are was a sea once.

Just imagine!” The sky is relentlessly  

sapphire, and the past is happening quickly:

the saguaros have opened themselves, stretched  

out their arms to rays millions of years old,

in each ray a secret of the planet’s  

origin, the rays hurting each cactus

into memory, a human memory

for they are human, the Papagos say:

not only because they have arms and veins  

and secrets. But because they too are a tribe,

vulnerable to massacre. “It is like

the end, perhaps the beginning of the world,”

Sameetah says, staring at their snow-sleeved  

arms. And we are driving by the ocean

that evaporated here, by its shores,

the past now happening so quickly that each

stoplight hurts us into memory, the sky  

taking rapid notes on us as we turn

at Tucson Boulevard and drive into  

the airport, and I realize that the earth

is thawing from longing into longing and  

that we are being forgotten by those arms.

                    *   *   *

At the airport I stared after her plane  

till the window was

                     again a mirror.

As I drove back to the foothills, the fog

shut its doors behind me on Alvernon,  

and I breathed the dried seas

                     the earth had lost,

their forsaken shores. And I remembered

another moment that refers only  

to itself:

                     in New Delhi one night

as Begum Akhtar sang, the lights went out.

It was perhaps during the Bangladesh War,  

perhaps there were sirens,

                     air-raid warnings.

But the audience, hushed, did not stir.

The microphone was dead, but she went on  

singing, and her voice

                     was coming from far  

away, as if she had already died.

And just before the lights did flood her  

again, melting the frost

                     of her diamond

into rays, it was, like this turning dark

of fog, a moment when only a lost sea  

can be heard, a time

                     to recollect

every shadow, everything the earth was losing,

a time to think of everything the earth  

and I had lost, of all

                     that I would lose,  

of all that I was losing.

Note from iatrogenicmyth: it would be so awesome if someone would go through the archives of this community and theysaid and tag the poems by topic as well as by poet, perhaps using the categories from the search feature at poetryfoundation.org since they seem to have a pretty good model for searching by topic. I would definitely volunteer to be a part of this effort, were it to occur. Anyone think this is a good idea or would be interested in participating?

Comments

[med_cat]

Haunting imagery in this poem...

I think tagging by topic would be a great idea, and I'd be willing to participate.

However, here's the problem, and this is why some of the recent posts are not even tagged by author: this comm has reached the limit of 1,200 tags allowed for Plus Accounts...

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I think it's a good idea and would LOVE to participate. Keep me in the loop. :)