READING POETRY LESSON 25: FAREWELL BY AGHA SHAHID ALI. When the ibex rubs itself against the rocks, who collects

Transcription

1 READING POETRY LESSON 25: FAREWELL BY AGHA SHAHID ALI At a certain point I lost track of you. They make a desolation and call it peace. When you left even the stones were buried: The defenceless would have no weapons. When the ibex rubs itself against the rocks, who collects its fallen fleece from the slopes? O Weaver whose seams perfectly vanished, who weighs the hairs on the jeweler's balance? They make a desolation and call it peace. Who is the guardian tonight of the Gates of Paradise? My memory is again in the way of your history. Army convoys all night like desert caravans: In the smoking oil of dimmed headlights, time dissolved all winter its crushed fennel. We can't ask them: Are you done with the world? In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other's reflections. Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like this centuries later in this country I have stitched to your shadow? In this country we step out with doors in our arms. Children run out with windows in their arms. You drag it behind you in lit corridors.

2 If the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything. At a certain point I lost track of you. You needed me. You needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy. Your history gets in the way of my memory. I am everything you lost. You can't forgive me. I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy. Your memory gets in the way of my memory: I am being rowed through Paradise on a river of Hell: Exquisite ghost, it is night. The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves: It is still night. The paddle is a lotus: I am rowed as it withers toward the breeze which is soft as if it had pity on me. If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn't have happened in this world? I'm everything you lost. You won't forgive me. My memory keeps getting in the way of your history. There is nothing to forgive. You won't forgive me. I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself. There is everything to forgive. You can't forgive me. If only somehow you could have been mine, what would not have been possible in the world? ANALYSIS The poem correlates memory with history. Three key lines make the connection between memory as personal and history as public, almost as if the two are different

3 terms for the same narrative. My memory is again in the way of your history, Ali writes, and the contrast between the adjectives my and your seems more pronounced than the difference between memory and history, as if memory and history can be identified as reflecting each other in some ways. The poet s interest in reflections can also be understood in terms of the empirical images that Ali uses: In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are lost in each other s reflections. Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like this centuries later in this country I have stitched to your shadow? The reflection that combines the apparently antithetical mosques and temples, then, also seem to be responsible for the creation of fossilised images that the poet envisions may be found centuries later. The image of an individual s shadow, which is to recur in the book, is introduced in this first poem as having a country stitched to it. Also, as is explored again later in the poem, the sense of losing one s shadow is referred to here: You drag it [the shadow] behind you in lit corridors. If the switch is pulled you will be torn from everything. Here, the fact that one s country or one s memory of one s country is as nebulous and vulnerable as one s shadow is reinforced, suggesting that loss is a spontaneous possibility of reality; in particular, the loss of identity or the loss of one s confidence in one s identity. The next stanza continues the poet s exploration of the relationship between history and memory:

4 At a certain point I lost track of you. You needed me. You needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy. Your history gets in the way of my memory. I am everything you lost. You can t forgive me. I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy. Your memory gets in the way of my memory: I am being rowed through Paradise on a river of Hell: Exquisite ghost, it is night. The paddle is a heart; it breaks the porcelain waves: It is still night. The paddle is a lotus: I am rowed as it withers toward the breeze which is soft as if it had pity on me. If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn t have happened in this world? The first section of the stanza seems to be closely related to the sense of exile, from the point of view of the migrant as well as the one who stays behind. By not specifying if the speaker is the migrant or the one who has remained at home, Ali suggests that the experiences are interchangeable insofar as one s approach to the other is concerned.

5 The speaker, as everything you have lost, is demonised into the Enemy by his compatriot who is separated from him by time and distance. This may also be a way of distinguishing between the postcolonial politics of another age and the exigencies of Ali s own, in which an emerging sense of differentiation sees a polarisation between the migrant identity and that of an indigenous resident of a nation. It is significant that both are affected by the experience, creating new identities that are both complementary to each other and problematic to each other. The line Your history gets in the way of my memory seems to suggest that the history of the complementary other is an invention that does not consider the value of personal memory and experience. Ali also returns in this stanza to the image of the river, which in the previous stanza was a reflective surface that reconciled contradictions and preserved a sense of harmony between them; here, the reflective surface, fragile as porcelain, is broken by the speaker s paddle as he rows on his solitary journey, his only company the Exquisite ghost of his memory of the person he has lost. The poem comes full circle at the end, to return to the idea of memory getting in the way of history: I m everything you lost. You won t forgive me. My memory keeps getting in the way of your history. There is nothing to forgive. You won t forgive me. I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself. There is everything to forgive. You can t forgive me. If only somehow you could have been mine,

6 what would not have been possible in the world? The poet suggests that his other will not forgive him for being an integral part of his or her memory; the part that will not be reconciled by the new history and constructed identity created because of the experience of migration. This is in one sense the dilemma created by the loss and sense of separation generated by the migrant experience, but it is also the dilemma of the contemporary idea of the nation, which can no longer subscribe to the idea of a homogenous identity. The lines If only somehow you could have been mine, / what would not have been possible in this world? suggest that if only the polarised halves of the indigenous and migrant identity could merge, the world would be a very different place.