BE NEAR ME
You who demolish me, you whom I love,
be near me. Remain near me when evening,
drunk on the blood of the skies,
becomes night, in its one hand
a perfumed balm, in the other
a sword sheathed in the diamond of stars.
Be near me when night laments or sings,
or when it begins to dance,
its steel-blue anklets ringing with grief.
Be here when longings, long submerged
in the heart’s waters, resurface
and when everyone begins to look:
Where is the assassin? In whose sleeve
is hidden the redeeming knife?
And when wine, as it is poured, is the sobbing
of children whom nothing will console –
when nothing holds,
when nothing is:
at that dark hour when night mourns,
be near me, my destroyer, my lover,
be near me.
Translated from Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali in The Rebel’s Silhouette.
