Poem

My Dinner with Agha Ashraf Ali

You light a candle
then curse the darkness

with your usual flourish
debone a carp

add pinch of salt
in your carpeted kitchen

discourse on the next course
to scrape or not the fish head

gaadkalley honorific
you offer a scrap of history

bestowed once by Kashmiris
on the Big Crap who was fishy

We seize the day
before the diem carpe us

and raise our wineglass
to the disappeared carpenters

of Kashmir
a parched paradise

by Rafiq Kathwari / @brownpundit