A haunted and haunting volume that establishes this Kashmiri-American poet as a seminal voice writing in English. In this new collection, his most ambitious, Ali finds that contemporary history has forced him to return to his homeland, not with the ease of a tourist as he would have liked, but as a witness to the savagery visited upon Kashmir since the 1990 uprising against Indian rule. Amid rain and fire and ruin, in a land of "doomed addresses," Ali evokes the tragedy of his birthplace. These are stunning poems, intensely musical steeped in history, myth, and politics all merging into Ali's truest mode, that of longing.