A review by halfcactus
The Half-Inch Himalayas by Agha Shahid Ali

4.0

Wherever you were, Faiz, that
language spoke to you; and when you heard it,
you were alone — in Tunis, Beirut,
London, or Moscow. Those poets’ laments
concealed, as yours revealed, the sorrows

of a broken time. You knew Ghalib was right:
blood must not merely follow routine, must not
just flow as the veins’ uninterrupted
river. Sometimes it must flood the eyes,
surprise them by being clear as water.