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.
Friday 1 December 2023
The Dacca Gauzes - Agha Shahid Ali
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries-De-La-Mer (On Van Gogh's painting) - Jude Goodwin
One of these boats carried Mary, put to sea by the Romans, the crying woman, hands wrapped with rags that smell of myrrh. And...
-
this isn't how I planned for my life to look like," I whispered under my breath as I walked to my car "tell me about it,&quo...
-
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s lon...
-
Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the...
No comments:
Post a Comment