I am reading a lot in jail. What else there is to do? Mraan has taken away my televiyion. Since I am from Kashmiri family, grief is in my heart. There is a poet, Agha Shahid Ali, who died young, and is known as a “chronicler of pain”, and I thought, Nawaz, you know about pain. Why not to read Agha Shahid Ali?
At the Museum
But in 2500 BC, Harappa,
Who caste in bronze, a servant girl?
No one keeps records
of soldiers and slaves
The sculptor knew this,
Polishing the ache
Of her fingers stiff
from washing the walls
And scrubbing the floors,
Stirring the meat
And the crushed asafetida
In the bitter gourd.
But I’m grateful she smiled
At the sculptor
As she smiles at me,
In bronze
A child who had to play woman
To her lord
When the warm June rains
Came to Harappa
Then Agha Saab, he writes about inherited skeletons that you have to carry through your own life, if you want to live and die with honour. I know about that too.
My ancestor, a man
of Himalayan snow,
came to Kashmir from Samarkand,
carrying a bag
of whale bones:
heirlooms from sea funerals.
His skeleton carved from glaciers ...
This heirloom,
his skeleton under my skin, passed
from son to grandson,
generations of snowmen on my back.
They tap every year on my window,
their voices hushed to ice....
...even if I’m the last snowman ... I’ll ride into spring on their melting shoulders.
I am also reading Faiz, who like me spent time in prison. Also like me, he was Marxist, loved shopping in Marks & Spencer.
At the Museum
But in 2500 BC, Harappa,
Who caste in bronze, a servant girl?
No one keeps records
of soldiers and slaves
The sculptor knew this,
Polishing the ache
Of her fingers stiff
from washing the walls
And scrubbing the floors,
Stirring the meat
And the crushed asafetida
In the bitter gourd.
But I’m grateful she smiled
At the sculptor
As she smiles at me,
In bronze
A child who had to play woman
To her lord
When the warm June rains
Came to Harappa
Then Agha Saab, he writes about inherited skeletons that you have to carry through your own life, if you want to live and die with honour. I know about that too.
My ancestor, a man
of Himalayan snow,
came to Kashmir from Samarkand,
carrying a bag
of whale bones:
heirlooms from sea funerals.
His skeleton carved from glaciers ...
This heirloom,
his skeleton under my skin, passed
from son to grandson,
generations of snowmen on my back.
They tap every year on my window,
their voices hushed to ice....
...even if I’m the last snowman ... I’ll ride into spring on their melting shoulders.
I am also reading Faiz, who like me spent time in prison. Also like me, he was Marxist, loved shopping in Marks & Spencer.
NS