I was at the first meeting of a literature seminar recently, and as we were collectively reviewing the course syllabus I came across the title of a book so beautiful and so perfect, so compact and complete, that I could barely concentrate for the rest of the two-hour class. I kept returning to it, repeating it—the perfect one-line poem. It’s by Agha Shahid Ali and it is called:

Call me Ishmael, tonight.

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