THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE

Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail. "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!" But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance-- Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance. Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance. Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

`"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied. "There is another shore, you know, upon the other side. The further off from England the nearer is to France-- Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"'

TUM PUKAR KO

Tum pukar lo, tumhara intezaar hai,
Khwaab chun rahi hai raat, beqarar hai...
Tumhara intezaar hai,
tum pukar lo...

Honth pe liye hue dil ki baat ham...
Jaagte rahenge aur kitni raat ham...
Muqtasar si baat hai tum se pyaar hai...
Tumhara intezaar hai, tum pukar lo...

Dil bahal to jaayega is khayal se...
Haal mil gaya tumhara apne haal se...)
Raat ye qaraar ki beqarar hai...
Tumhara intezaar hai...

Tumse

लौट आया मैं बिना कुछ कहे
शब्द पड़ने लगे छोटे
दर्द बढ़ने लगा
कहे भी थे जो कभी सब हो गए अनकहे

रास्ता बढ़ता रहा
घर दूर होता रहा
साथ चल कर भी कही हम अजनबी से रहे

फैलता मैं गया जितना
तुम सिमटते गए उतना
दर्द कहीं ज़्यादा है, तुमने सहे

लौट आया मई बिना कुछ कहे

--
सर्वेश्वर दयाल सक्सेना

...Aaa-nd, I'm back! :)

Oh, and hello, Quincy The Quackpot! Good to see you here. :)

DACCA GAUZES

On December 8, the poet Agha Shahid Ali died, too young, of a brain tumor. Shahid was a Kashmiri, a Muslim and a cosmopolitan who wrote splendid poetry in English and lived in America. He was admired for his wonderful poems and for his dignity, his outrageous comedy, his sweet nature. His books include A Nostalgist's Map of America and The Half-Inch Himalayas. His poem on the "Dacca Gauzes" exemplifies Shahid's nostalgia, his sense of history, his grace, a sensibility as fine as the gauze fabrics he describes here:

The Dacca Gauzes

. . . for a whole year he sought to accumulate the most exquisite Dacca gauzes.
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Those transparent Dacca gauzes
known as woven air, running
water, evening dew:

a dead art now, dead over
a hundred years. "No one
now knows," my grandmother says,

"what it was to wear
or touch that cloth." She wore
it once, an heirloom sari from

her mother's dowry, proved
genuine when it was pulled, all
six yards, through a ring.

Years later when it tore,
many handkerchiefs embroidered
with gold-thread paisleys

were distributed among
the nieces and. daughters-in-law.
Those too now lost.

In history we learned: the hands
of weavers were amputated,
the looms of Bengal silenced,

and the cotton shipped raw
by the British to England.
History of little use to her,

my grandmother just says
how the muslins of today
seem so coarse and that only

in autumn, should one wake up
at dawn to pray, can one
feel that same texture again.

One morning, she says, the air
was dew-starched: she pulled
it absently through her ring.