The Country Without a Post Office By Agha Shahid Ali
Agha Shahid Ali ↠ 5 Free download
Translucent elegies 'for the city that is leaving forever' (Srinagar) from one of its sons, who also happens to be one of America's finest younger poets.—John Ashbery The Country Without a Post Office
My history gets in the way of your memory Poetry This collection is a mourning and a rejoicing voice symmetrically established by the poet. He draws a realistic picture of the streets, lakes, roads and ice with his words. He also tries to attract the readers' attention to the problems that lie on the land as well as in the minds of people of Kashmir. However, he misses the mass genocide of 1990 +- 2 years is a shame and at the same time a surprise! Poetry Farewell
At a certain point I lost track of you.
They make a desolation and call it peace.,
When you left even the stones were buried:
The defenceless would have no weapons.
Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise?
My memory is again in the way of your history.
At a certain point I lost track of you.
You needed me. You needed to perfect me:
In your absence you polished me into the Enemy.
Your history gets in the way of my memory.
I am everything you lost. You can’t forgive me.
I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy.
Your memory gets in the way of my memory:
My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.
There is nothing to forgive. You won’t forgive me.
I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.
There is everything to forgive. You can’t forgive me.
If only somehow you could have been mine,
what would not have been possible in the world?
YouTube link for recitation of this complete poem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjM6v...
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The Last Saffron
I will die, in autumn, in Kashmir,
Yes, I remember it, the day I’ll die,
I broadcast the crimson,
so long ago of that sky, its spread air,
its rushing dyes, and a piece of earth
On everyone's lips was news
Of my death but only that beloved couplet,
broken, on this :
If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this.
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The Country without a Post Office
Again I’ve returned to this country
where a minaret has been entombed.
It’s raining as I write this. I have no prayer.
Then be pitiless you whom I could not save—
Send your cries to me, if only in this way:
I’ve found a prisoner’s letters to a lover—
One begins: “These words may never reach you.”
Another ends: “The skin dissolves in dew
without your touch.” And I want to answer:
I want to live forever. What else can I say?
It rains as I write this. Mad heart, be brave.
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A Pastoral
We shall meet again, in Srinagar,
by the gates of the Villa of Peace,
our hands blossoming into fists
till the soldiers return the keys
and disappear. Again we’ll enter
our last world, the first that vanished
in our absence from the broken city.
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Ghazal
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?
Lord,, cried out the idols, Don’t let us be broken,;
Only we can convert the infidel tonight,.
God, limit these punishments, there’s still Judgment Day—
I’m a mere sinner, I’m no infidel tonight.
My rivals for your love—you’ve invited them all? This is mere insult, this is no farewell tonight.
And I, Shahid, only am escaped to tell thee—
God sobs in my arms. Call me Ishmael tonight.
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The Blessed Word : A Prologue
We shall meet again, in Petersburg
- OSIP MANDELSTAM
Let me cry out in that void, say it as I can. I write on that void: Kashmir, Kaschmir, Cashmere, Qashmir, Cashmir, Cashmire, Kashmere, Cachemire,Cushmeer, Cachmiere, Cašmir. Or Cauchemar, in a sea of stories? Or: Kacmir, Kaschemir, Kasmere, Kachmire, Kasmir. Kerseymere?
He reinvents Petersburg (I, Srinagar), an imaginary homeland, filling it, closing it, shutting himself (myself) in it. For there is the blesséd word with no meaning, there are flowers that will never die, roses that will never fall, a night in which Mandelstam is not afraid and needs no pass. The blesséd women are still singing.
Agha Shahid Ali
Poetry I had heard a lot about Agha Shahid Ali's poetry but never got a chance to read it until recently when I came across this book in a bookshop in Islamabad. The book is mainly set in Kashmir, a place with historical depth and rich cultural heritage, currently torn apart by occupation. Agha Shahid's poetry is about resistance, loss, nostalgia, hope and longing. His imagery is powerful and vivid and the repertoire of words and metaphors expansive. At certain points, he alludes to historical events that over time have shaped the consciousness of the Kashmiris as a people and a nation and have created memories that both haunt and console them. My favourite one is 'I see Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight', which I found deeply moving. Anyone from the sub-continent who has some degree of familiarity with Kashmir as a region, can easily relate to the themes and happenings featuring in Agha Shahid's poetry. His poetry is a reminder that there are places on earth where people are brutalized and dehumanized and simply cannot exercise their right to self-determination. No matter what your nationality or ethnicity is, you need to read this book; it surely will make you more empathetic. Poetry Poignant is the word for this. I'm pretty sure if one stares too long at the words it feels as if they're written in blood, not ink.
Beautiful. Poetry
This is a collection of 27 poems about life in conflict-riddled Kashmir. Kashmir is a territory in the Himalayas that’s governed by India, but claimed by both India and Pakistan—and, it should be noted, has a significant population of residents that want to be part of neither country. In other words, there are some who’d like to see an independent Kashmir. However, at the moment Kashmir is one portion of one of India’s 29 states, Jammu and Kashmir—a state which is, itself, tripartite (Hindu Jammu, Muslim Kashmir, and Buddhist Ladakh.)
It’s a telling quote from Tacitus with which the author begins the collection. “Solitudinum faciunt et pacem appellant.” I won’t claim that I didn’t have to look this up, but it means: “They make a desert, and call it peace.” The first poem echoes variations on that quote.
There are a range of poetry styles within this collection, including: rhyming verse, free verse, poetic prose, and ghazal. A ghazal is a Middle Eastern style of lyric poem which has a pattern of rhyme and is metered to be set to music; there are several in this collection. Some of the poems are sparse and some are wordy, and variety is the order of the day.
The 27 poems of this collection are divided among five parts. The book is brief (under 100 pages), and it contains only a prologue and notes (some of which are interesting) with respect to ancillary matter.
This collection paints a portrait of war and life in a war-torn locale. It’s as much the latter as the former, The title poem, “The Country With No Post Office,” suggests the sapping nature of life where the institutions of governance and civil society have broken down.
I’d recommend this collection for those who enjoy poetry, but also for those interested in the conflict in Kashmir.
Poetry Among the grave subjects traveled through in this collection of Mr. Ali’s poems, which all stem from the political wars in his homeland of Kashmir, the most disturbing and affecting one for me is his inability to speak of his love and desire for other men. It’s ironic that, in his poems, Mr. Ali criticizes the government of his country for silencing the letters and voices of its people, examines the chasm between history and memory and repeatedly asks what is learned from the past, yet in his more personal poems (“Ghazal,” 40; “First Day of Spring,” 77; “After the August Wedding, in Lahore, Pakistan,” 89-91), can barely speak of the gender of his desired lovers, distorts the memory of intimate moments with dark imagery (as if desire for a man will lead him to every “door” and “street in Hell,” 40, 77), and never learns to let go of the beliefs which cause these feelings in him to be like a glass “filled/with pain” (89).
From a technical standpoint, Mr. Ali is superb. His use of progressive end rhyme schemes, so smoothly executed they are almost undetectable, is admirable. Throughout the book, his repetition of images and metaphors reinforces his themes beautifully. Although the language is dense and difficult at times, the poems are affecting enough that I found myself reading many of them twice, which to me is a good indicator of a strong poem. Poetry Not my cup of tea.
I liked the personification of Srinagar and Kashmir, but the abstract prose went above my head leaving no impression behind :|
Its me, not the book. Poetry
'Break their hands.' Will ours return with / guns, or a bouquet?Shahid's poetry blooms from a soil of sorrow and blood; an evocative hymn and lyrical balm for the wounds that Kashmir sustains.
My memory is again in the way of your history/ Your history gets in the way of my memory/ Your memory gets in the way of my memoryWhile the fruit of The Country Without A Post Office is its beautiful imagery and use of motifs, the flower it grows of lies in the heart of history. Written in the early 1990s, the poems in this collection are shaped by the conflict, bloodshed and occupation in and of Kashmir, as well as in the Balkans, thematically resound also with the diasporic experience and pain felt as if in the phantom of a severed limb.
The result is a poignant masterpiece reflecting the structural skill of a true-blooded poet, full of mournful allusions to culture and history, perhaps difficult to understand for those unfamiliar, but of the same evocative power and consistency as blood. Poetry The sheer longing, grief and and love in here would have been enough on their own, but the lyrical verses and vivid imagery make this truly exceptional.
The Country Without a Post Office, City of Daughters and I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight are a few I remember that stood out to me, though there were definitely more. Farewell (My history gets in the way of your memory, oof) will stay with me for a long time.
Purely on form: I think this is the first time I saw Ghazals in English. Not yet sure how I feel about that, but they were pretty good as poems. Poetry
