FIRE TREE    by Rafiq Kathwari Tips of his mustache like a whip braided, a turbaned invader four centuries ago carried Persian saplings in a caravan across the Himalayas to Kashmir. "Our chinar will last a thousand years," my grandfather said as rustling boughs reigned above the tin roof of the house where I was born a Scorpio at midnight. Each fall the tree burst into color. We gathered the remains of dyes to create our rustic fuel for winter, sprinkling water on burning leaves, palms brushing light ashes together. I packed fragile coal in a clay pot matted in painted wicker, my kangri, cloaking it between my knees under a loose mantle, my pharun. The ashes warmed my bones. We embraced spring with "the moon left on all night among the leaves." I traveled to the future of other worlds, returned years later to see my father, sun-withered, sipping his morning tea alone beside an amputated trunk. —For Agha Shahid Ali