THE POTTER
by Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda / El alfarero
Your whole body has
a fullness or a gentleness destined for me.
When I move my hand up
I find in each place a dove
that was seeking me, as
if they had, love, made you of clay
for my own potter's hands.
Your knees, your breasts,
your waist
are missing parts of me like the hollow
of a thirsty earth
from which they broke off
a form,
and together
we are complete like a single river,
like a single grain of sand.
FROM ANOTHER DESERT
by Agha Shahid Ali
1.
Cries Majnoon:
Beloved
you are not here
It is a strange spring
rivers lined with skeletons
Wings beat
in the cages
letting the wind hear
its own restlessness
the cry of gods
and prisoners
letting me hear
my agony
2.
Each statue will be broken
if the heart is a temple. When
the gods return, from the ends
of the fasting sky, they’ll stand
in the rain and knock and knock.
They’ll force open the heart.
In the grief of ruins, they’ll pick
up their severed arms
and depart and depart and depart.
3.
There again is memory
at my doorstep—
jasmine crushed under
departing feet.
The moon extinguishes
its silver pain
on the window.
4.
Cries Majnoon:
Those in tatters
may now demand love:
I’ve declared a fashion
of ripped collars.
The breezes are lost
travellers today,
knocking, asking
for a place to stay.
I tell them
to go away.
All night they knock, asking
if the Beloved
had ever passed this way.
All night I keep
the heart shut.
I’m waiting for a greater madness:
to declare
myself
to the Hangman.
5.
Who now weeps
at the crossroads,
remembers the directions
that led so soon
to betrayal,
the disappearance
of all wayfarers
when it was almost
the morning?
Some went back,
folding breezes
in their wallets.
Some ran ahead,
the sun divided
among them, eclipses
hidden in their eyes.
6.
Majnoon was again sighted
in the streets, intoxicated
as before, surpassing the rapture
of every mad lover.
7.
In prison Majnoon weeps for Satan:
And Iblis bereft of dreams would still not bow to man Qais weep for Iblis a
lover like you lover of God that cruel Beloved Qais welcome the knives the
stones but never bow to man learn from Iblis survive somehow survive in Hell
each day this memory the echo of the Beloved’s voice telling one to go to Hell
8.
The prisoners know they’ve been
eclipsed, that someone
greater than them is now
among them. For though they know
the rattle of bound ankles,
they’ve never heard
such sorrow before,
this pounding, this beating down of the floor,
this plaint,
all night, of feet in chains.
9.
Ambushed in century after century by the police of God
the broken Ishmaels cry out in the blazing noons
welcoming the knives the stones rained down on them
again declared madmen by the government of Sorrow
And Majnoon also among them with bare hands
digs graves in the desert
crying out for his dead Laila
his back broken by a giant teardrop
inside it the ruins of Jerusalem or Beirut
or another rival to the garden of paradise
where his heart broke and broke centuries ago
*The Arabic love story of Qais and Laila is used—in Urdu and Persian literature—to cite the exalting power of love. Qais is called Majnoon (literally “possessed” or “mad”) because he sacrificed everything for love. The legend has acquired a political dimension.
Agha Shahid Ali is from Kashmir, India. His book, The Half-Inch Himalayas, is published by Wesleyan University Press. His second book, A Nostalgist’s Map of America, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.
