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The Half-Inch Himalayas
A stellar collection of early work from a renowned poet.
The Half-Inch Himalayas is a stellar collection of early work by the poet Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001). His most recent volumes of poetry are Rooms Are Never Finished and The Country Without a Post Office. He is also the editor of Ravishing Real Ghazals in English.
The Half-Inch Himalayas is a stellar collection of early work by the poet Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001). His most recent volumes of poetry are Rooms Are Never Finished and The Country Without a Post Office. He is also the editor of Ravishing Real Ghazals in English.
64 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 1987
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285 people want to read
About the author
Agha Shahid Ali
24 books213 followersAgha Shahid Ali (आगा शाहीद अली) was an American poet of Kashmiri ancestry and upbringing.
His poetry collections include A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, Rooms Are Never Finished (finalist for the National Book Award, 2001). His last book was Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a collection of English ghazals. His poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and many other anthologies.
Ali was also a translator of Faiz Ahmed Faiz (The Rebel's Silhouette; Selected Poems) and editor (Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English). He was widely credited for helping to popularize the ghazal form in America.
Ali taught at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as creative writing programs at University of Utah, Warren Wilson College and New York University. He died peacefully, in his sleep, of brain cancer in December, 2001. He was laid to rest in Northampton, Massachusetts.
His poetry collections include A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, Rooms Are Never Finished (finalist for the National Book Award, 2001). His last book was Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a collection of English ghazals. His poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and many other anthologies.
Ali was also a translator of Faiz Ahmed Faiz (The Rebel's Silhouette; Selected Poems) and editor (Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English). He was widely credited for helping to popularize the ghazal form in America.
Ali taught at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as creative writing programs at University of Utah, Warren Wilson College and New York University. He died peacefully, in his sleep, of brain cancer in December, 2001. He was laid to rest in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 31, 2021
Houses
The man who buries his house in the sand
and digs it up again, each evening,
learns to put it together quickly
and just as quickly to take it apart.
My parents sleep like children in the dark.
I am too far to hear them breathe
but I remember their house is safe
and I can sleep, the night’s hair
black and thick in my hands.
My parents sleep in the dark.
When the moon rises, the night’s hair
turns white in my arms.
I am thirteen thousand miles from home.
I comb the moon out of the night,
and my parents are sleeping like children.
“My father is dead, ”
Vidur writes,
and a house in my neighborhood, next
to my parents’, has burned down.
I keep reading the letter.
If I wake up,
my body will be water, reflecting the fire.
The man who buries his house in the sand
and digs it up again, each evening,
learns to put it together quickly
and just as quickly to take it apart.
My parents sleep like children in the dark.
I am too far to hear them breathe
but I remember their house is safe
and I can sleep, the night’s hair
black and thick in my hands.
My parents sleep in the dark.
When the moon rises, the night’s hair
turns white in my arms.
I am thirteen thousand miles from home.
I comb the moon out of the night,
and my parents are sleeping like children.
“My father is dead, ”
Vidur writes,
and a house in my neighborhood, next
to my parents’, has burned down.
I keep reading the letter.
If I wake up,
my body will be water, reflecting the fire.
July 23, 2020
My heart is full and empty all at once. Somewhat 'triple exiled' myself, I found so much of myself in his work. It is as if Agha Shahid Ali has heard our collective heartbeat and put it to beautiful, heart wrenching words. His work is ever-lasting.
November 19, 2021
Loved Cracked Portraits, Leaving Your City:
"In the midnight bar
your breath collapsed on me.
I balanced on
the tip of your smile,
holding on to your words
as I climbed the dark steps.
Meticulous,
your furniture neatly arranged for death,
you sharpened the knife
on the moon’s surface,
polished it with lunatic silver.
You were kind,
reciting poetry in a drunk tongue.
I thought: At last!
Now I loiter in and out
of your memory,
speaking to you wherever I go.
I’m reduced to my poverties
and you to a restless dream
from another country
where the sea is the most expensive blue.
My finger, your phone number
as its tip, dials the night.
And your city follows me,
its lights dying in my eyes."
"In the midnight bar
your breath collapsed on me.
I balanced on
the tip of your smile,
holding on to your words
as I climbed the dark steps.
Meticulous,
your furniture neatly arranged for death,
you sharpened the knife
on the moon’s surface,
polished it with lunatic silver.
You were kind,
reciting poetry in a drunk tongue.
I thought: At last!
Now I loiter in and out
of your memory,
speaking to you wherever I go.
I’m reduced to my poverties
and you to a restless dream
from another country
where the sea is the most expensive blue.
My finger, your phone number
as its tip, dials the night.
And your city follows me,
its lights dying in my eyes."
June 27, 2017
shahid is dramatic but rightfully so...
devastating collection!!
devastating collection!!
August 3, 2013
From the Half Inch Himalayas:
"I Dream It Is Afternoon When I Return to Delhi"
At Purana Qila I am alone, waiting
for the bus to Daryanganj. I see it coming,
but my hands are empty.
“Jump on, jump on,” someone shouts,
“I’ve saved this change for you
for years. Look!”
A hand opens, full of silver rupees.
“Jump on, jump on.” The voice doesn’t stop.
There’s no one I know. A policeman,
handcuffs silver in his hands,
asks for my ticket.
I jump off the running bus,
sweat pouring from my hair.
I run past the Doll Museum, past
headlines on the Times of India
building, PRISONERS BLINDED IN A BIHAR
JAIL, HARIJAN VILLAGES BURNED BY LANDLORDS.
Panting, I stop in Daryaganj,
outside Golcha Cinema.
Sunil is there, lighting
a cigarette, smiling. I say,
“It must be ten years, you haven’t changed,
it was your voice on the bus!”
He says, “The film is about to begin,
I’ve bought an extra ticket for you,”
and we rush inside:
Anarkali is being led away,
her earrings lying on the marble floor.
Any moment she’ll be buried alive.
“But this is the end,” I turn
toward Sunil. He is nowhere.
The usher taps my shoulder, says
my ticket is ten years old.
Once again my hands are empty.
I am waiting, alone, at Purana Qila.
Bus after empty bus is not stopping.
Suddenly, beggar women with children
are everywhere, offering
me money, weeping for me.
October 28, 2020
Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox,
my home a neat six by four inches
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.
This is home. And this the closet
I'll ever be home. When I return,
the colors won't be so brilliant,
The Jehlum's waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love,
so overexposed.
And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant, negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.
my home a neat six by four inches
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
the half-inch Himalayas in my hand.
This is home. And this the closet
I'll ever be home. When I return,
the colors won't be so brilliant,
The Jehlum's waters so clean,
so ultramarine. My love,
so overexposed.
And my memory will be a little
out of focus, in it
a giant, negative, black
and white, still undeveloped.
March 7, 2020
A remarkably stellar collection. At this point I just want an Agha Shahid Ali book club to discuss all of this.
August 6, 2020
First reading, 2016:
This is not poetry where you will struggle to figure out why others have praised it so highly, and wonder whether you´re missing something vital. It lets you in at first glance. About a jogger: ¨the dark scissors of his legs / cut the moon´s / raw silk¨. Looking forward to delving into more works by Agha Shahid Ali asap. 5/5 stars.
Second reading, 2020:
I like some of the imagery in this collection as well as its treatment of the ex-pat experience of nostalgia for one's homeland, the city of Kashmir to be specific. It was interesting re-reading this work having recently read Midnight's Children, which mostly takes place in Kashmir as well. Some of the literary and cultural details in Agha Shahid Ali's collection still went over my head, and I would be really interested to learn more so as to have a fuller appreciation for the richness of some of these poems. I think the writing excels at conveying the poet's personality (albeit presumptuous to make such a claim, so perhaps I should replace "poet" with "the speaker"): gentle, someone who feels deeply, sometimes playful, other times philosophical and pensive. 4/5 stars.
Here are some excerpts that I particularly enjoyed:
Swallow this summer street,
then wait for the monsoon.
Needles of rain
melt on the tongue. Will you go
farther? A memory of drought
holds you: you remember
the taste of hungry words
and you chew syllables of salt.
Can you rinse away this city that lasts
like blood on the bitten tongue?
***
On the page befor me,
the wind rustles the page.
Something begins to stir:
The villagers are coming
back to life,
the sun once again
dresses their huts.
It soaks up the dawn's
washable blues.
Something stalks through the page.
(from "The Tiger at 4:00 A.M.")
***
My parents sleep like children in the dark.
I am too far to hear them breathe
but I remember their house is safe
and I can sleep, the night's hair
black and thick in my hands
(from "Houses")
***
Somewhere
without me
my life begins
He who lives it
counts on a cold rosary
God's ninety-nine Names in Arabic
The unknown hundredth he finds in glaciers
then descends into wet saffron fields
where I wait to hold him
(from "In the Mountains")
***
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, his breath
arctic,
he froze women in his embrace.
His wife thawed into stony water,
her old age a clear
evaporation.
(from "Snowmen")
***
Who were these people?
And who finished them to the last?
If dust had an alphabet, I would learn.
(from "A Wrong Turn")
This is not poetry where you will struggle to figure out why others have praised it so highly, and wonder whether you´re missing something vital. It lets you in at first glance. About a jogger: ¨the dark scissors of his legs / cut the moon´s / raw silk¨. Looking forward to delving into more works by Agha Shahid Ali asap. 5/5 stars.
Second reading, 2020:
I like some of the imagery in this collection as well as its treatment of the ex-pat experience of nostalgia for one's homeland, the city of Kashmir to be specific. It was interesting re-reading this work having recently read Midnight's Children, which mostly takes place in Kashmir as well. Some of the literary and cultural details in Agha Shahid Ali's collection still went over my head, and I would be really interested to learn more so as to have a fuller appreciation for the richness of some of these poems. I think the writing excels at conveying the poet's personality (albeit presumptuous to make such a claim, so perhaps I should replace "poet" with "the speaker"): gentle, someone who feels deeply, sometimes playful, other times philosophical and pensive. 4/5 stars.
Here are some excerpts that I particularly enjoyed:
Swallow this summer street,
then wait for the monsoon.
Needles of rain
melt on the tongue. Will you go
farther? A memory of drought
holds you: you remember
the taste of hungry words
and you chew syllables of salt.
Can you rinse away this city that lasts
like blood on the bitten tongue?
***
On the page befor me,
the wind rustles the page.
Something begins to stir:
The villagers are coming
back to life,
the sun once again
dresses their huts.
It soaks up the dawn's
washable blues.
Something stalks through the page.
(from "The Tiger at 4:00 A.M.")
***
My parents sleep like children in the dark.
I am too far to hear them breathe
but I remember their house is safe
and I can sleep, the night's hair
black and thick in my hands
(from "Houses")
***
Somewhere
without me
my life begins
He who lives it
counts on a cold rosary
God's ninety-nine Names in Arabic
The unknown hundredth he finds in glaciers
then descends into wet saffron fields
where I wait to hold him
(from "In the Mountains")
***
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, his breath
arctic,
he froze women in his embrace.
His wife thawed into stony water,
her old age a clear
evaporation.
(from "Snowmen")
***
Who were these people?
And who finished them to the last?
If dust had an alphabet, I would learn.
(from "A Wrong Turn")
March 15, 2011
Incomparable.
September 27, 2019
Haunting, full of longing for homelands and the past, replete with references to Mughal history (my favorite kind). This was my favorite poem from the collection.
After Seeing Kozintsev’s King Lear in Delhi
Lear cries out “You are men of stones”
as Cordelia hangs from a broken wall.
I step into Chandni Chowk, a street once
strewn with jasmine flowers
for the Empress and the royal women
who bought perfumes from Isfahan,
fabrics from Dacca, essence from Kabul,
glass bangles from Agra.
Beggars now live here in tombs
of unknown nobles and forgotten saints
while hawkers sell combs and mirrors
outside a Sikh temple. Across the street,
a theater is showing a Bombay spectacular.
I think of Zafar, poet and Emperor,
being led through this street
by British soldiers, his feet in chains,
to watch his sons hanged.
In exile he wrote:
“Unfortunate Zafar
spent half his life in hope,
the other half waiting.
He begs for two yards of Delhi for burial.”
He was exiled to Burma, buried in Rangoon.
After Seeing Kozintsev’s King Lear in Delhi
Lear cries out “You are men of stones”
as Cordelia hangs from a broken wall.
I step into Chandni Chowk, a street once
strewn with jasmine flowers
for the Empress and the royal women
who bought perfumes from Isfahan,
fabrics from Dacca, essence from Kabul,
glass bangles from Agra.
Beggars now live here in tombs
of unknown nobles and forgotten saints
while hawkers sell combs and mirrors
outside a Sikh temple. Across the street,
a theater is showing a Bombay spectacular.
I think of Zafar, poet and Emperor,
being led through this street
by British soldiers, his feet in chains,
to watch his sons hanged.
In exile he wrote:
“Unfortunate Zafar
spent half his life in hope,
the other half waiting.
He begs for two yards of Delhi for burial.”
He was exiled to Burma, buried in Rangoon.
May 26, 2021
Shahid….he is not just a poet but a feeling. If you don’t feel hollowed, harrowed, howling and empty inside when you read his work, he is probably not the one for you. He shakes the foundation of lies beneath which you bury your sorrow & lays it bare for you to scavenge on. You will fall sick but soon it’ll become a habit and you won’t need to hide them anymore but will feast on them for you’ll know they are a part of you, your evolution.
November 2, 2025
Wow. I think everything in me has come to a standstill. There are so many layers to agha shahid ali’s poems. They are so rich with resistance, memory, culture, grief and history. There is a lot of context and I don’t think I am even close to comprehending much of it but I am here. And I want to stay here with his poems and history (history fails to be an adequate enough word for his poems and him as a person)
April 9, 2023
First saw this on the MTA posters, so I wanted to read the whole book. I liked it even though I'm not normally a fan of poetry.
Postcard from Kashmir, A lost memory of Delhi, and Stationary (poem featured on poster) are my favorites.
Would be good idea to read this again after learning more about India and the Kashmir region, I probably missed a lot.
Postcard from Kashmir, A lost memory of Delhi, and Stationary (poem featured on poster) are my favorites.
Would be good idea to read this again after learning more about India and the Kashmir region, I probably missed a lot.
July 3, 2020
My fav pieces are "Story of a Silence", "Cracked Portraits" and "Homage to Faiz Ahmed Faiz".
If a piece starts with " You wrote this from Beirut, two years before the Sabra-Shatila massacres." you know you have me hooked.
If a piece starts with " You wrote this from Beirut, two years before the Sabra-Shatila massacres." you know you have me hooked.
June 2, 2023
wow just wow
February 18, 2024
personal favorites: stationery, vacating an apartment, postcards from kashmir.
Read
October 11, 2024Dog-eared:
"Snowmen"
"Cracked Portraits"
"The Previous Occupant"
It's nice to know I'm the only one out who there who writes obsessively about his family tree.
"Snowmen"
"Cracked Portraits"
"The Previous Occupant"
It's nice to know I'm the only one out who there who writes obsessively about his family tree.
May 20, 2021
Collection of poems. Would fit well with other South Asian Literature. Not my cup of tea.
July 25, 2018
After reading a selection of Faiz's poems, translated by Agha Shahid Ali, and following a brief look at a couple of Ali's ghazals, I felt it only natural to read his poems in more depth and picked up this collection. It was possibly one of the best decisions I've ever made; the collection is subdivided into four parts, and each part underscores a different experience Ali felt with regards to location. I don't think it is enough to compare one section with another, as for me, it can only be read holistically. The entire collection is aching with reminiscence, grief, and a yearning for the original, but each section differs in the way Ali treats these themes. For example, "The Dacca Gauzes" in section I provides an eerier, more distant experience than "A Butcher" in section II, which contextualizes loss of language and community within a more present landscape (even though it alludes to a historic Islamic festival). My experience reading all of these pieces was transformed from location to location - Kashmir, then Delhi, then Pennsylvania, then Delhi again - but remained rooted in Ali's own longing. Some of my favourites, among the above mentioned, were "A Dream of Glass Bangles", "After Seeing Kozintsev's King Lear in Delhi", "Homage to Faiz Ahmed Faiz", "The Previous Occupant", and "I Dream It Is Afternoon When I Return to Delhi".
Highly recommend this wonderful collection!
Highly recommend this wonderful collection!
February 23, 2025
Intense, and my favourite book from Agha Shahid Ali.
Some poems and verses I liked:
Snowmen
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, his breath
arctic,
he froze women in his embrace.
His wife thawed into stony water,
her old age a clear
evaporation.
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.
No, they won’t let me out ofwinter,
and I’ve promised myself,
even if I’m the last snowman,
that I’ll ride into spring
on their melting shoulders.
Some poems and verses I liked:
Snowmen
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, his breath
arctic,
he froze women in his embrace.
His wife thawed into stony water,
her old age a clear
evaporation.
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.
No, they won’t let me out ofwinter,
and I’ve promised myself,
even if I’m the last snowman,
that I’ll ride into spring
on their melting shoulders.
December 27, 2022
Wherever you were, Faiz, that
language spoke to you; and when you heard it,
you were alone — in Tunis, Beirut,
London, or Moscow. Those poets’ laments
concealed, as yours revealed, the sorrows
of a broken time. You knew Ghalib was right:
blood must not merely follow routine, must not
just flow as the veins’ uninterrupted
river. Sometimes it must flood the eyes,
surprise them by being clear as water.
April 20, 2021
A lot of very haunting and elliptical work early work by Agha Shahid Ali. Ali's works are sparse, but highly evocation, incorporating the tensions of central Asia and Northern India into the very personal and lyric set of poems. The backdrop of Kashmir never feels far from Ali's concerns or imaginary.
October 30, 2012
another stuff...Ufffhh....how much more awaits me....<3
November 1, 2024
beautiful and heartbreaking.
just reread it, still a great work of poetry
just reread it, still a great work of poetry
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews