What struck me most in the Evening with a Sufi: Selected Poems by Afsar Mohammad translated by him with Shamala Gallagher are vivid, sometimes startling images such as of ‘a body like a wound peeks from your torn shirt’ or of wounds that ‘open their huge doors’ in a poem like ‘Name Calling’. Or consider the lines in ‘A Piece of Bread’ written in memory of Bismillah Khan:
When you left,
the shehnai turned alone
into her dark corner
and sang to herself,
beating and beating
the ceaseless tune
of the dream you left
orphaned.
and the image of Fatima [who] ‘began to broom the hurt field/with her braid’.