Poem by Agha Shahid Ali

‘Don’t tell my father I have died,’ he says,

and I follow him through blood on the road

and hundreds of pairs of shoes the mourners

left behind, as they ran from the funeral,

victims of the firing. From the windows we hear

grieving mothers, and snow begins to fall

on us, like ash. Black on edges of flames,

it cannot extinguish the neighborhoods,

the homes set ablaze by midnight soldiers.

Kashmir is burning.

…

—- From ‘I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight’, by Agha Shahid Ali; The Country Without a Post Office; Ravi Dayal; New Delhi; 2000.