Ghazal

What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?

But he has bought grief’s lottery, bought even the rain.


Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.

For mixers, my love, you’d poured—what?—even the rain.


Of this pear-shaped orange’s perfumed twist, I will say:

Extract Vermouth from the bergamot, even the rain.


How did the last one love you—with earth? air? and fire?

He held just one thing back till he got even: the rain.


This is God’s site for a new house of executions?

You swear by the Bible, Despot, even the rain?


After the bones—those flowers—this was found in the urn:

The lost river, ashes from the ghat, even the rain.


What was I to prophesy if not the end of the world?

A salt pillar for the lonely lot, even the rain.


How the night raged, desperately streaking the air with flames—

To help burn down my house, Fire sought even the rain.


He would raze the mountains, he would level the waves;

he would, to smooth his epic plot, even the rain.


New York belongs at daybreak to only me, just me—

To make this claim Memory’s brought even the rain.


They’ve found the knife that killed you, but whose prints are these?

No one has such small hands, Shahid, not even the rain.

Agha Shahid Ali (1949–2001) was a poet and author of the collections The Country Without a Post Office as well as Rooms Are Never Finished, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry.
Originally published:
July 1, 2000

Featured

Searching for Seamus Heaney

What I found when I resolved to read him

What Happened When I Began to Speak Welsh

By learning my family's language, I hoped to join their conversation.

When Does a Divorce Begin?

Most people think of it as failure. For me it was an achievement.

You Might Also Like

AI and the Future of Writing

A roundtable of authors discuss the ramifications for art—and life.

Chasing Alice

The life and death of a chatbot

Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?

Critics mourn a bygone cultural era. But nostalgia for the new isn't new.

Support Our Commitment to Print

Subscribe to The Yale Review. Receive four print issues a year—essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism.
Subscribe