A Monsoon Note on Old Age by Agha Shahid Ali

A Monsoon Note on Old Age

This is fifty years later: I

sit across myself, folded in

monsoon sweat, my skin

shriveled, a tired eunuch, aware

only of an absence;

                               the window bars

sketch a prison on me;

                               I shuffle the stars,

a pack of old cards;

                               the night regains

its textures of rain. I overexpose

your photograph, dusting

death’s far-off country