Ghazal For Open Hands

Ghazal for Open Hands

in memory of Agha Shahid Ali


The imam stands above your grave
to pray with open hands,
cupping your spirit like grain
in the palms of these open hands.

Poet of Kashmir, the graveyard lathers
my shoes with mud
as the imam calls to Islam's God
and lifts his open hands.

Ghazal-maker, your pine box sinks
into a cumulus of snow,
red earth thumping on the coffin,
dropped from open hands.

There are some today who murmur
of the cancer in your brain
but do not know the words for speaking
to Allah with open hands.

We listen to Islamic prayers
at the cemetery, as we pay for bombs
to blossom into graves in places
where they pray with open hands.

Far from here, the bombs we bless
are tumbling down in loaves
of steel to tear away the fingers
from their hungry open hands.

Shahid, your grave multiplies wild
as cancer cells across Afghani earth,
countless prayers reverberating
in the well of the throat, in open hands.

I cannot scrape off the mud choking
my shoes or blink away the vision
of reaching into the hole for you,
my hands open to your open hands.

-- Martín Espada

Posted over on Poets Against the War