Time for a poem?

The following is by a South Asian poet Agha Shahid Ali.

BEYOND THE ASH RAINS

What have you known of loss/
That makes you different from other men?
- Gilgamesh

When the desert refused my history,
refused to acknowledge that I had lived
there, with you, among a vanished tribe,

two, three thousand years ago, you parted
the dawn rain, its thickest monsoon curtains,

and beckoned me to the northern canyons.
There, among the red rocks, you lived alone.
I had still not learned the style of nomads:

to walk between the rain drops to keep dry.
Wet and cold, I spoke like a poor man,

without irony. You showed me the relics
of our former life, proof that we'd at last
found each other, but in your arms I felt

singled out for loss. When you lit the fire
and poured the wine, 'I am going," I murmured,

repeatedly, "going where no one has been and no one will be.... Will
you come with me?"
You took my hand, and we walked through the streets

of an emptied world, vulnerable
to our suddenly bare history is which I was,

but you said won't again be, singled
out for loss in your arms, won't ever again
be exiled, never again, from your arms.

Agha Shahid Ali

(also a translator of the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz about whom
Edward Said wrote, "[Faiz] was, I think, one of the greatest poets of
this [twentieth] century... a poet whose poetry combined the
sensuousness of Yeats with the power of Neruda." Here is a poem by
Faiz:

DON'T ASK ME FOR THAT LOVE AGAIN

That which then was ours, my love,
don't ask me fot that love again.
The world then was gold, burnished with light -
and only because of you. That's what I had believed.
How could one weep for sorrows other than yours?
How could one have any sorrow but the one you gave?
So what were these protests, these rumors of injustice?
A glimpse of your face was evidence of springtime.
The sky, wherever I looked, was nothing but your eyes.
If you'd fall into my arms, Fate would be helpless.

All this I'd thought, all this I'd believed.
But there were other sorrows, comforts other than love.
The rich had cast their spell on history:
dark centuries had been embroidered on brocades and silks.
Bitter threads began to unravel before me
as I went into alleys and in open markets
saw bodies plastered with ash, bathed in blood.
I saw them sold and bought, again and again.
This too deserves attention. I can't help but look back
when I return from those alleys - what should one do?
And you still are so ravishing - what should I do?
There are other sorrows in this world,
comforts other than love.
Don't ask me, my love, for that love again.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

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