Beyond the Ash Rains

When the desert refused my history,
Refused to acknowledge that I had lived
there, with you, among a vanished tribe,

two, three thousand years ago, you parted
the dawn rain, its thicket monsoon curtains,

and beckoned me to the northern canyons.
There, among the red rocks, you lived.
I had still not learned the style of nomads

To walk between the rain drops to keep dry
Wet and cold, I spoke like a poor man,

Without irony. You showed me the relics
of our former life, proof that we’d at last
found each other, but in your arms I felt

singled out for lost. When you lit the fire
and poured the wine, “I am going,” I murmured,
repeatedly, “going where no one has been
and no one will be. Will you come with me?”
You took my hand and we walked through the streets

of an emptied world, vulnerable
to our suddenly bare history in which I was,

but you said won’t again be, singled
out for loss in your arms, won’t ever again
be exiled, never again, from your arms.

Agha Shahid Ali