We are faithful. On their doors we hang wreaths. The mad guide! The lost speak like this. They haunt

Transcription

1 READING POETRY LESSON 24: THE COUNTRY WITHOUT A POST OFFICE BY AGHA SHAHID ALI 1 Again I ve returned to this country where a minaret has been entombed. Someone soaks the wicks of clay lamps in mustard oil, each night climbs its steps to read messages scratched on planets. His fingerprints cancel bank stamps in that archive for letters with doomed addresses, each house buried or empty. Empty? Because so many fled, ran away, and became refugees there, in the plains, where they must now will a final dewfall to turn the mountains to glass. They ll see us through them see us frantically bury houses to save them from fire that, like a wall caves in. The soldiers light it, hone the flames, burn our world to sudden papier-mâché inlaid with gold, then ash. When the muezzin died, the city was robbed of every Call. The houses were swept about like leaves for burning. Now every night we bury

2 our houses theirs, the ones left empty. We are faithful. On their doors we hang wreaths. More faithful each night fire again is a wall and we look for the dark as it caves in. 2 We re inside the fire, looking for the dark, one card lying on the street says, I want to be he who pours blood. To soak your hands. Or I ll leave mine in the cold till the rain is ink, and my fingers, at the edge of pain, are seals all night to cancel the stamps. The mad guide! The lost speak like this. They haunt a country when it is ash. Phantom heart, pray he s alive. I have returned in rain to find him, to learn why he never wrote. I ve brought cash, a currency of paisleys to buy the new stamps, rare already, blank, no nation named on them. Without a lamp I look for him in houses buried, empty He may be alive, opening doors of smoke, breathing in the dark his ash-refrain: Everything is finished, nothing remains. I must force silence to be a mirror

3 to see his voice again for directions. Fire runs in waves. Should I cross that river? Each post office is boarded up. Who will deliver parchment cut in paisleys, my news to prisons? Only silence can now trace my letters to him. Or in a dead office the dark panes. 3 The entire map of the lost will be candled. I m keeper of the minaret since the muezzin died. Come soon, I m alive. There s almost a paisley against the light, sometimes white, then black. The glutinous wash is wet on its back as it blossoms into autumn s final country Buy it, I issue it only once, at night. Come before I m killed, my voice canceled. In this dark rain, be faithful, Phantom heart, this is your pain. Feel it. You must feel it. Nothing will remain, everything s finished, I see his voice again: This is a shrine of words. You ll find your letters to me. And mine to you. Come soon and tear open these vanished envelopes. And reach the minaret: I m inside the fire. I have found the dark.

4 This is your pain. You must feel it. Feel it, Heart, be faithful to his mad refrain For he soaked the wicks of clay lamps, lit them each night as he climbed these steps to read messages scratched on planets. His hands were seals to cancel the stamps. This is an archive. I ve found the remains of his voice, that map of longings with no limit. 4 I read them, letters of lovers, the mad ones, and mine to him from whom no answers came. I light lamps, send my answers, Calls to Prayer to deaf worlds across continents. And my lament is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent to this world whose end was near, always near. My words go out in huge packages of rain, go there, to addresses, across the oceans. It s raining as I write this. I have no prayer. It s just a shout, held in, It s Us! It s Us! whose letters are cries that break like bodies in prisons. Now each night in the minaret I guide myself up the steps. Mad silhouette, I throw paisleys to clouds. The lost are like this: They bribe the air for dawn, this their dark

5 purpose. But there s no sun here. There is no sun here. Then be pitiless you whom I could not save Send your cries to me, if only in this way: I ve found a prisoner s letters to a lover One begins: These words may never reach you. Another ends: The skin dissolves in dew without your touch. And I want to answer: I want to live forever. What else can I say? It rains as I write this. Mad heart, be brave. ANALYSIS The opening lines suggest the poem s preoccupation with returning to one s homeland at last, only to find that its cultural icons have been decimated: Again I ve returned to this country / where a minaret has been entombed. Addresses of residents have been wiped out, each house buried or empty : Empty? Because so many fled, ran away, And became refugees there, in the plains, where they must now will a final dewfall to turn the mountains to glass. They ll see us through them. These lines, in which the frost-covered mountains become both a reflection of the refugees position and a glass through which to view the lost homeland, establish the

6 geographical features of the land plains and mountains as being sympathetic to the position of those in exile. If the first section of the poem is poignant on behalf of the collective sense of exile, Ali takes the next section of the poem into far more personal territory, describing the emotions of the returning exile as he searches for a lost loved one. Ali writes: Phantom heart, pray he s alive. I have returned in rain to find him, to learn why he never wrote. [ ] Without a lamp I look for him in houses buried, empty He may be alive, opening doors of smoke, breathing in the dark his ash-refrain: Everything is finished, nothing remains. I must force silence to be a mirror to see his voice again for directions. In lines that capture the desperate urgency of searching in the ruined houses for a lover, Ali turns the poem s central concern of being unable to communicate with those lost in a land governed by militant destruction toward the concept of reflection. It is

7 silence rather than sound that is his mirror; he also introduces the synaesthetic idea here of seeing a voice. Seeing and hearing a voice seem to be reflective actions, both in the sense of finding one s reflection in another, and of reflecting or thinking about what the absence of a loved one, and the need to be united with them, mean to the searcher in the poem. The third section of the poem unites the first and the second; the speaker has not found his loved one, but he has found his letters to him in an abandoned minaret: The entire map of the lost will be candled. I m keeper of the minaret since the muezzin died. Come soon, I m alive. [ ] Come before I m killed, my voice cancelled. In this dark rain, be faithful, Phantom heart, this is your pain. Feel it. You must feel it. In the letters left behind in the minaret, addressed to him, the speaker finds that his lost lover had taken on the duties of the dead muezzin, perhaps a final act of faith that impelled him to preserve a cultural tradition in what were almost certainly his own final days. The lines In this dark rain, be faithful, Phantom heart, / this is your pain. Feel it, Ali s voice seems reminiscent of Coleridge s in his Dejection: An Ode, when he yearns for a stormy night to startle this dull pain, and make it move and live. In Ali s case it is the recognition of his own pain in another s words, read on a rainy night, that prompt

8 him to want to feel the pain of loss. He goes on to plead with himself to take strength from the letters: This is your pain. You must feel it. Feel it, Heart, be faithful to his mad refrain For he soaked the wicks of clay lamps, lit them each night as he climbed these steps to read messages scratched on planets. [ ] This is an archive. I ve found the remains of his voice, that map of longings with no limit. His lover s need to candle the entire map of the lost seems transferred to the speaker here, in his realisation of the map of longings with no limit, the need to illuminate the context or landscape of both personal and shared loss and longing fuelling him to be faithful to his loved one s mad refrain, and his need to take up the muezzin s call. The final section finds him taking up the cause himself as he continues to read the letters that were written to him, but never sent, in the country without a post office: I read them, letters of lovers, the mad ones, and mine to him from whom no answers came. I light lamps, send my answers, Calls to Prayer

9 to deaf worlds across continents. And my lament is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent to this world whose end was near, always near. Finding his own letters sent from abroad with the unsent letters addressed to him, collectively the letters of lovers, the mad ones, the speaker responds to the letters addressed to him by taking up the call to prayers himself, turning his lament into cries like dead letters that will never be heard by those in deaf worlds across continents. Like his lost lover, he knows that his refrain will never be heard by those far away, but the act itself is one of being faithful to another s attempt, to unite with him in action if not in physical presence, to ensure that his last act will not have been in vain. It is also an act of penitence for not having been able to save his lover: Then be pitiless you whom I could not save Send your cries to me, if only in this way: I ve found a prisoner s letters to a lover One begins: These words may never reach you. Another ends: The skin dissolves in dew without your touch. And I want to answer: I want to live forever. What else can I say? It rains as I write this. Mad heart, be brave. The letters addressed to him are full of both longing and a lingering sensuality, the reference to physical intimacy ensuring that the speaker s own act of writing in the rain

10 echoes his lover s in a way that gives a sense of personal impetus to their combined imperative to carry on the muezzin s task. Perhaps the sense of homoerotic longing here is also a reflection of the longing for sameness in the midst of difference, for a sense of identifying that which helps people find echoes of themselves in others, rather than the politically motivated imperative, in times of turbulence, to highlight difference. The final phrase of the poem Mad heart, be brave seems to reinforce the sense that if he is carrying on the task left unfinished by his lover, it is out of a sense of personal devotion and grief. The fact that a returning migrant finds himself unexpectedly manning an abandoned minaret is given a sense of veracity and authenticity by his personal motives for engaging in a cultural mission.