Agha Shahid Ali

“Stationary"

The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.

Write to me.”
― Agha Shahid Ali, The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems

“I flipped through their visions,
left my number in their sleep.
But no one called back.
I called all night,
called for years,
called till their lids began to ring,
ten, twenty, two hundred times,
and then they went blind
on my dreams.
Now their eyes don't open.
No one picks up the phone.”
― Agha Shahid Ali, The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems