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By exiles Agha Shahid Ali for Edward W. Said In Jerusalem a dead phone's dialed by exiles You learn your strange fate: you were exiled by exiles You open the heart to list unborn galaxies Don't shut that folder when Earth is filed by exiles. Before night passes over the wheat of Egypt, let stones be leavened, the bread torn wild by exiles Crucified Mansoor was alone with the Alone: God's loneliness-just his-compiled by exiles By the Hudson lies Kashmir, brought from Palestine- It shawls the piano, Bach beguiled by exiles. Tell me who's tonight the Physician of Sick Pearls? Only you as you sit, Desert child, by exiles Match Majnoon (he kneels to pray on a wine-stained rug) or prayer will be nothing, distempered mild by exiles "Even things that are true can be proved" Even they? Swear not by Art but, dear Oscar Wilde, by exiles Don't weep, we'll drown out the Calls to Prayer, O Saqi- I'll raise my glass before wine is defiled by exiles Was -after the last sky- this the fashion of fire: autumn's mist pressed to ashes styled by exiles? If my enemy's alone and his arms are empty, give him my heart silk-wrapped like a child by exiles Will you, beloved stranger, ever witness Shahid two destinies at last reconciled by exiles?   Agha Shahid Ali, Call me Ishmael tonight: a book of ghazals (2003) <- Go Back.       Edward Said, an exile.