The Country without a Post Office

by Agha Shahid Ali

By that dazzling light we see men removing statues from temples. We beg them, ‘Who will protect us if you leave?’ They don’t answer, they just disappear on the road to the plains, clutching the gods.

‘I’ll take you anywhere, even in curfew hours,’ and give me a bouquet— ‘There’s a ban on wreaths!’

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 bleeding, apart from the shore, as we went on the day I’ll die, past the guards, and he, keeper of the world’s last saffron, rowed me on an island the size of a grave. On two yards he rowed me into the sunset, past all pain. On everyone’s lips was news of my death but only that beloved couplet, broken, on his: ‘If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this.’

I am writing to you from your far-off country. Far even from us who live here. Where you no longer are. Everyone carries his address in his pocket so that at least his body will reach home.

This is home—the haven a cage surrounded by ash—the fate of Paradise.

The mountains return my stare, untouched by blood.

I too, O Amichai, saw the dresses of beautiful women. And everything else, just like you, in Death, Hebrew, and Arabic. They ask me to tell them what Shahid means— Listen: It means ‘The Belovéd’ in Persian, ‘witness’ in Arabic.