Poem
Moniza Alvi
Doors
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I observed that her knuckles were rawwith the effort of knocking on doors.
And if they opened she’d have difficulty
passing through – the awkwardness
of easing in with her world intact.
More than once I implored her to give up.
But I admired my wife, in a way –
the single-mindedness, her fierce pursuit.
She worked attentively, whenever she could,
at her listening skills, honing them
by day and night
on the creaking of a far-off door.
© 2005, Moniza Alvi
From: How the Stone Found Its Voice
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Tarset
Published with kind permission of the author and Bloodaxe (www.bloodaxebooks.com).
From: How the Stone Found Its Voice
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Tarset
Moniza Alvi
(Pakistan, 1954)
Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore in Pakistan, the daughter of a Pakistani father and an English mother. She moved to England when she was a few months old, and grew up in Hertfordshire. She didn’t revisit Pakistan until after her first book of poems, The Country at My Shoulder, was published.
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Poems of Moniza Alvi
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I observed that her knuckles were rawwith the effort of knocking on doors.
And if they opened she’d have difficulty
passing through – the awkwardness
of easing in with her world intact.
More than once I implored her to give up.
But I admired my wife, in a way –
the single-mindedness, her fierce pursuit.
She worked attentively, whenever she could,
at her listening skills, honing them
by day and night
on the creaking of a far-off door.
From: How the Stone Found Its Voice
Published with kind permission of the author and Bloodaxe (www.bloodaxebooks.com).
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