Rococo and Other Worlds
Page 1
ROCOCO
and Other Worlds
WESLEYAN POETRY
A Driftless series Book
This book is the 2010 selection
in the Driftless Translation
category, for a translation of
poetry into English.
Afzal Ahmed Syed
ROCOCO
AND OTHER WORLDS
SELECTED POEMS
Translated from the Urdu by
Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Published by
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Middletown, CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
© 2010 by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the
United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
The Driftless Series is funded by the
Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund
at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green
Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their
minimum requirement for recycled paper.
Originally published in Urdu by Aaj Ki Kitaben,
Karachi: “An Arrogated Past” as Chheeni Hoi Tareekh,
1984; “Death Sentence in Two Languages” as Do
Zubanon Mein Saza-e Maut, 1990; “Rococo and Other
Worlds” as Rokoko Aur Doosri Dunyaen, 2000
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sayyid, Afzal Ahmad.
[Poems. English. Selections]
Rococo and other worlds: selected poems /
Afzal Ahmed Syed; translated from the Urdu by
Musharraf Ali Farooqi.
p. cm. — (Wesleyan poetry)
ISBN 978-0-8195-6933-2 (cloth: alk. paper)
I. Farooqi, Musharraf, 1968– II. Title.
PK2200.S3935A2 2010
891.4’39171 — dc22 2009036032
This project is supported in part by an award from
the National Endowment for the Arts.
CONTENTS
from Rococo and Other Worlds — 2000
Rococo and Other Worlds
Viewers’ Choice
A Difficult Question
A Corroded Pin
The Spirit of the Lord
The Inaugural Plaque Is Stolen
Spring Shall Return to the City
It Could Never Be
The Campaign to Introduce an Ice-Cream
A Girl
On a Political Party Being Allotted
the Horse as Its Election Symbol
Britannicus
Astronomy and the Poet
A Beginning with Great Names
A Dog’s Death
Tell Me a Story
Soldiers Seize Virgil’s Lands
The Ultimate Profession
from Death Sentence in Two Languages — 1990
If My Voice Is Not Reaching You
The Last Date of Existence
You Live in Lovely Orbs
Poem
Zarmeena
The Genres of Poetry
To Live Is a Mechanistic Torture
I Was Taken with an Indigo Flower
Whom One Loves
The Last Contention
Has Love Been Mislaid
Had We Not Sung the Song
Poem
Love
A Parable
Near Lavania
Those Who Own the Filly
A Couplet by Poet-Laureate Nubar Isbarian
Step into My Parlor
Poem
I Was Not Born to This Destiny
from An Arrogated Past — 1984
I Invented Poetry
The Clay-mine
I Was Not Given Life in Such Plenitude
If Someone Would Remember Me
What the Sea Said to You
If They Could Learn
To Live Another Day
If I Do Not Return
The Slaughter of Snow-Birds
Inclination
The Heart of a Poet
The Dirge of a Rabid Dog
from
ROCOCO
and Other Worlds
Rococo and Other Worlds
Elias Canetti maintains
Goya was a partisan
The one who made the Maja Nude
the Maja Clothed, and
the Majas on a Balcony
His Rococo world disappeared
in Third of May in a dark Madrid alley
He became oblivious
that parasol carriers had adorned his canvas and his bed
The source of light
in his canvas is a floor lantern
troops whose faces remain hidden
discharge fire on unresisting civilians
everyone resolves death in his own manner
the white shirt has his chest thrust out
in defiance
Successive generations of painters
shall revisit the theme
The subject of his last oil
the Milkmaid of Bordeaux
would have been claimed by some revolution
In the passing it may be mentioned
Goya sided against Napoleon
with the people of Spain
Viewers’ Choice
Wandy D wants
to preserve our war against insects
for her viewers
(she will be compensated for her pains)
It is her good fortune
that at present we are targeted by locust swarms
She has
canceled her plans
to visit Ipanema or Copa Cabana
this summer
and the cut of the ultimate-bikini
is farthest from her thoughts
Armed with a printout
of possible hazards, diet and dress-code
she wants to take on
our psychedelic sun
The use of baking soda
as a teeth-whitener
is foreign to Doctor D
She is similarly disinterested
in a French manicure
(it is an expensive proposition!)
Locust swarms is what catches her fancy
documented by God, Pausanias and Pliny
From the vantage point of Etruscan emperors
she desires to see us fall in the arena
We desire
that Wandy should assume Farfara as her a.k.a.
have a part of her body temporarily or permanently tattooed
and perform
the bedroom act in some movie
that we could rent from the nearest video-library
A Difficult Question
Where was Cleopatra
at the time of Caesar’s murder?
A free trip
to Rome
for one who solves the riddle
A Corroded Pin
Dr Pedro Ara
would have died of starvation
in our country
waiting for a commission
to embalm a corpse
To preserve their better halves
in flesh
after their tortuous deaths
occurred to none of our presidents
But not all presidents are alike
Nor all first ladies are prima-ballerinas
whom it does not behoove
to become earth again
if she breathes her last
as Dr Pedro Ara’s compatriot
and the mistress of a head-of-state
In the presi
dential bedchamber
she lay in peace for three years
in her open casket
After his deposal
the former ruler shared with her his exile
and to reach a Madrid cellar
she forded the whole Atlantic
Three decades later
to reclaim power
the former president
again crossed the Atlantic
without the prima-ballerina’s casket
For the simple reason that
his beloved —
the renowned actress —
had a revulsion for unsightly objects
such as
a corroded pin
in the hair of an embalmed corpse
The Spirit of the Lord
The Spirit of the Lord is moving over waters
over colorful waters
over twelve-year-vintage waters from Scotland
The Spirit of the Lord is speeding
dancing
doing somersaults
flinging its arms wide
blowing kisses
to pull together
someone who must stand for his master
in the morning
to inaugurate a by-pass bridge
The Inaugural Plaque Is Stolen
The plaque worth
one thousand us dollars
installed at a project’s inauguration
has been stolen
It is no trifling matter
One must not sit still
after lodging an FIR against unknown thieves
Islamabad must dispatch
five-thousand-strong Police and Rangers detachments
to surround the area
conduct house-to-house searches
carry out arrests of youth
shower children with slaps
strike white heads against walls
snatch anything that takes their fancy
In the event the plaque’s not recovered
the guard
that did not search the black Mercedes
of the guest-of-honor on his way out
should be dismissed
Spring Shall Return to the City
By virtue of the prime minister’s
photogenic smile
Adonis-like
the murdered youth shall return from Hades
and other victims too
The president shall clear his throat
and the terrorists will surrender arms
and get jobs at the Mehran Bank
In the afternoon
the moment the Chief Minister’s yawn is ended
the citizenry shall set out for movie houses and theaters
Topless nymphomaniac girls will come out to the French Beach
The moment our eyes pop and the tongues loll out
from bodies strung up
on boughs of trees
Spring shall return to the city
It Could Never Be
Her love
for haute-couture
Her embroidered bolero
Her Egyptian amulet for eternal life
Her partiality
towards Islam and chocolate-chip ice cream
Her bridal gown, and for swearing-in ceremonies her green
and her blue dresses
People ordered stripped at her behest
it could never be
The Campaign to Introduce an Ice-Cream
After the Rangers trucks
and the armored personnel carriers
before the tanks made an appearance
they rolled out of toy shops
into our streets
with their white boxes-on-wheels
fitted out with beach-umbrellas
They spoke the language of strawberry and vanilla
To attract people
they had a charming tune
Their campaign
to introduce an ice-cream
was the last pleasant surprise for our city
A Girl
Her moans
in the throes of ecstasy
sound more melodious
than the whole world’s national anthems
During the sexual act
she could be determined more pretty
than any beauty queen
A visit to any strife torn part of the city
could be risked
to obtain
her blue video
Only to meet her
is impossible
Like Pakistan
Hala Faruqi too
is in police custody
On a Political Party Being Allotted
the Horse as Its Election Symbol
Do not appear on a wretched piece of paper; do not conceal Odysseus and his wily companions in your belly; walk out of the posters smeared on Aabpara walls and trot neighing past Constitution Avenue; get under the Amazons’ thighs; unseat Nelson at the Trafalgar; head straight for Giambologna’s studio and walk in without knocking; take al-Mutanabbi to the Sultan’s tent — for the first time in history a poet will read out his qasida astride a horse; come out of the bank lockers; break the vaults, and Samson-like bring down the pillars of the head office; do not submit your mane to the lawn mower; Eve is presenting Adam an apple bought from the supermarket, pluck it from her hands and present it to your favorite filly; go aboard and discover the America that Isabella could not buy for all her crown jewels; enslave Alexander and Julius Caesar; pull Adonis’s bier to its last resting place; locate sunken ships; search for the Earth’s treasures; invent a new variety of grass; wear the moon as a stud in your shoe; do not look back at the Minotaur; Jesus doesn’t have a ride, take him to Mary Magdalene’s place this evening under falling showers; Nefertiti has never set eyes on a horse, imagining you the God she will prostrate herself before you; do not let your flanks be branded; do not let your image be stamped.
Britannicus
On the eve of Saturnalia
his melancholy strains
had stirred the drunken mob
But words failed him then
his spasms on the white alabaster floor
soon ended
He shall never again roll dice against his elder brother
“He shall come to soon enough!”
Nero declared with imperial fluency
The mother of the murderer and his victim
had lost all
He had been poisoned before everyone’s eyes
to the right of the holy relics
He died
without giving his sister a farewell kiss
and lay thus in the banquet hall
After a brief silence
everyone dug into their food again
Astronomy and the Poet
As an homage to love, the volcano of a Martian moon was named after the beloved of the man who had discovered that moon and another, whose naming after a mythical god was influenced by the worship instinct — a lesser passion than love. But we can overlook that as the god in question was killed. What affords us satisfaction is that a satellite of Mars was baptized after the one who made the first unsuccessful flight, and that to invest the cosmos with some semblance of purpose, at least the regions of Mercury were named after a poet, a novelist, a painter, and a composer. Aphrodite, the deity of love, reigns over just one region of Venus, whereas Satellite No. 433 was determined as the God of Fornication. The satellite named after the God Hermes was unfortunately lost after it drew one thousand meters too close to Earth. Those who venerate wealth would be delighted to learn that the goddess of the Roman mint is in revolution as a Martian satellite. All the illustrious cosmic gods whose worshipers became extinct or were put to the sword, are in orbit somewhere or the other, with their august names. Some day someone will also name a planetoid — discovered somewhere in the far reaches of the space — after our God.
A Beginning with Great Names
We do not at all know
wher
e Alice Rendal may be found at this hour
This past day she was seen at the hotel pool’s western side
and in the telescope
of Godhra Camp’s Ibrahim Borka
on the Industrial Corporation’s fifth floor
Were he a silkworm
he would have woven a cocoon around her
and the two would have been dropped in boiling water together
Our sympathies and our nights
go out to the girls
who saw off their childhood speedily and with insolence
Our love
goes out to the girl
whose eyes tell New York time
whose nail polish glows in the dark
She is actively trying to save the race of dolphins
The best of all nights
was spent in her permed hair
We were at variance over Germany’s reunification
Yet we know
the heart is a trapeze artist
that keeps up its act
without an audience
Wellai Wang-Ik
is lying stripped and joyful in her room
and could entertain guests in that state
but our knowledge is short
Beginning today
we must
call the two girls Helen and Beatrice —
who pass by Mansfield Street
at half past five in the evening —
that we may make a beginning with two great names
A Dog’s Death
Air Vice-Marshal Manocher Nadirshaw
taking his dinner
during a civilian flight
chokes on a bone
and dies
Throw another dog
before just such a bone
Tell Me a Story
Tell me a story
other than that you’re carrying my seed
other than that you’re more beautiful
than the girl who has left me
other than that you always wear a white brassiere