by Syed, Afzal Ahmed; Farooqi, Musharraf Ali; Syed, Afzal Ahmed
The listeners to this tale, by virtue of their altruistic nature or benevolence, might perhaps be expectant that further down, by error or through a miracle, the sight of the man will be restored, which is erroneous.
When the man had no pretext left to refute the fact of the loss of his sight—for darkness is its own contention—he must have tried to make much ado: the usual reactions of a man during or after a calamity: crying, yelling, flailing arms about, turning away from God and resolving on suicide. Men who are not written about in stories take forever to get through these stages, but he lived them all in a flash, and then he again turned extremely gently in the bed, because after all the planks of his bed were vulnerable to disregard, and on the bed within his reach slept the woman who was impregnated with his sight. He wished to reveal his situation to the woman, but left himself to be discovered. The woman is close to awakening; it is morning after all.
As he had wished, the loss of his sight became apparent to his woman, became apparent to his neighbors, his kin, friends and acquaintances, his juniors, his superiors, all, and if he had had a mother it would have become apparent to her too. Then things took their usual course. He was retired from his position with a modest stipend, and his woman found employment.
Then one day he told his woman that he wished to change the house. The house was changed. After a long time it dawned on the woman that he could not climb stairs from memory, that he had lost count.
His woman, the fact of whose pregnancy has been detailed, one day gave birth to a girl. On the occasion the man was as overwhelmed with happiness as any father capable of regarding his daughter. After a long time he felt the contention of darkness being refuted. His daughter had light in both her eyes.
He continued in his efforts to discern his daughter’s features by fondling her face with his fingertips when someone told him of her likeness to him, and on learning that, he was delighted. At that moment he thought of what his features were like, and the same moment realized that his face had been lost to him. He pondered for days and was continuously disappointed.
His woman, neighbors, friends, kin, he entreated them all for the recovery of his features; many a memory that had been prevented from stirring went crazy, but despite all he could not recall his face, and now only a miracle could restore it to him. The reason for his continuing belief in miracles is beyond the comprehension of the storyteller.
Often, when his woman was absent, he wished to strangle his daughter so that no one could remind him of their resemblance. But he could not rationalize such audacity with logic.
In a small house by the sea a change came to his life. A girl whom he might have loved in adolescence came to know of his condition, and one day she graced a small house by the sea with her man and children. The same day his woman and the other woman’s man observed the miraculous likeness of the other woman’s children to the man whose story is not yet ended. This observation was ignored with as much ceremony as the surprise with which it had been made. Then on some festive occasion the other woman’s man, on behalf of himself and his woman, presented the sightless man with a dog. Sooner or later everyone who has lost his sight finds himself with a dog. He named the dog after himself.
Then he took such courage that he roamed the seaside with the dog, and returned home in the evening to a waiting woman holding a girl’s hand.
The narrator of this story cannot tell whether all continued as before, or his sea inundated the townships, or his dog reverted, or his wife, or daughter, or both, became depraved, ran away from home, or died. A story narrated with pen and ink must be considered told where it is ended.
Near Lavania
There, where silence lies flanked by armed sentinels, with her I call the bread, the bread and the wine, the wine. With her verdant fingers she touches an aquatic bell and dead horsemen rush galloping past under the boughs of the flower-of-the-unknown-name. She says that in the rain the flower a man gives a woman always carries the same meaning. Hope, which disarrays our night and our day, brings her to the black juniper tree. The name of this land is Genesis. Where we shall be picked with the vines and brewed, there I present to her a horse, and to me she gives an olive plant—the one made of glass and naphtha and wood and stone and wool.
Near Lavania, I touch her flower bearing five wounds and closing the puerto morona kiss her lips. I am the weed which grows outside the stable; a tablet with plaintive letters; the loneliest fish in the net; the memory of a heartsick princess; an Argonaut forsaken back on land.
In flight we taste many seasons, and now it’s snowing heavily, and I cover her wholly with flowers. The moon is in Virgo. The bricks of this building were laid in the full moon. In those days I was living dangerously and except for the dream I had no word.
Could her wide blue eyes be more erroneously read?
Those Who Own the Filly
Pedigree mares are mated
at the time of year when flowers bloom
In autumn they run on wagers
A wooden horse
soon to be sawn apart
for a petty sum
shall mate with
the Queen of Fortune
Odysseus and his warriors
will be cut to pieces
History is a document of coming into heat of mares
who, had they not been mated,
would have reduced all race-courses
to fields covered with burnt grass
In an effort to flow with the tide of History
a stallion
is mounting a quivering spot
clasped in the depth
is faking an orgasm
without removing his lunettes —
leaping into a thought —
is taking the hit on his sex
With the pair of jaws
catching tight to the mane
making love to the filly
who could not wait for the historian’s fingers
to probe her ovaries
The crazed horse
cannot understand that
the breeders —
those who own the filly —
without making a wager on their mark
shall shoot him
the moment he withdraws
after making love
A Couplet by Poet-Laureate Nubar Isbarian
The beauty of the couplet that poet-laureate Nubar Isbarian composed for his courtesan Irma’s breasts would be lost in translation as Irma’s breasts were wasted on the sands of River Esta. In Armenia it surpassed the acclaim accorded the couplets that Nubar Isbarian had written for his beloved and contemporary poetess, Nura Na’albandian’s eyes, that were cited as the epitome of the highest poetry. Poetess Nura Na’albandian was so tormented by the couplet that oftentimes she was disposed to put out her eyes with the gift dagger from her former lover, goldsmith Jaraer Sambarian, which she was only permitted to put in her heart. The couplet earned such renown in the length and breadth of Armenia that every woman—from women of easy virtue to chaste virgins—even the cloistered nuns of the Convent of Turikian, entreated Nubar Isbarian, declaring they would bare their breasts for him if he would compose for them as elegant a couplet or even one that was somewhat inferior. Troubled by the celebrity of the couplet, the annalists regularly reported that Nubar Isbarian had never seen Irma’s breasts bare, nor felt them with his hands, for to make such poetry about a thing seen or felt was beyond human capacity. Irma was aware of these reports, and also of the apple-orchard that she had cost Nubar Isbarian. And also, that Nubar Isbarian, under the spell of her breasts or antagonized by the annalists, is abdicating his vocation. Before it could have been reported in future chronicles that poet-laureate Nubar Isbarian had stopped writing poetry, with the holy dagger in goddess Ardvazi’s temple, Irma severed her breasts and threw them on the sands of River Esta.
Step into My Parlor
Step into my Parlor,
death says to me
In her person
; I see my beloved
undressed
identify my ejaculation
flowing on her thighs
she carries the foetus of the poem
I could not write —
carries a snare
I aimed at a star
Step into my Parlor,
death says to me
not knowing
that now I have nothing to give her
Poem
When the vanquished women of Yanieh
were singing of a new love in their songs
In indigo looted from Sidon
when the headmen
were dyeing the corpses
When the citizens of Nish
saw the birds fettered in brass chains
flying away in pairs
When a youth
emerged from the well of Aama
wielding a golden oar
and without identifying himself
fell dead
Of wheatish breasts
the deep-naveled Mehrema
without waiting for the snow to melt
came to me astride the mare
whose eyes had been put out
and gave me the hourglass
filled with black sand
In the temple of Artemis
that went up in flames
the day after
we made the last adoration
Before every blood stained taper-holder
I kissed her lips
From its lips, my severed head brought before Wasil
suddenly spurted blood
and the beautiful Mehrema
withdrew from Wasil’s side
I Was Not Born to This Destiny
I was not born in the month of making verses; nor spotless white horses were pulling this century. To celebrate my coming into existence a bowl of starch must have been distributed among neighbors who no longer solemnized the festival of blooming verdure. My first friend must have been the mynah who repeated her name to me, and under one roof in separate cages we were both imprisoned. There were not one or more columns in front of our house. No kind or flint-hearted woman was appointed my nanny who would have covered me or some wounded animal with garlands. My father had no ivory cane to beat me with. My mother would have become renowned for her long hair and long poems had my father not cut them off with his sickle.
I was thrown on the fish nets that were laid away after the river silted up. The first thing my teeth felt must have been the wooden trough filled with the vomit of dogs. Quite early I must have learnt to fill my stomach with wild barley and the blood-red rice that was never among the food placed in the lake as offering for the dead.
The peace pact was being witnessed when my father tendered his resignation from life, and knowing full well that no one else would have found the sea more compassionate, I pledged to carry out my plan to ford channels and straits; but my mother knew that I was not born to die anonymous on a faraway isle. Announcing my death as she covers me with a blood-stained sheet, she will recognize that I never lost a war.
from An
ARROGATED
Past
I Invented Poetry
The Moroccans invented the papyrus
the Phoenicians, the alphabet
I invented Poetry
The grave-digger invented the oven
Those who appropriated the oven invented the bread ticket
The bread eaters invented the queue
and learned the chorus
With ants joining the bread-queue
Starvation was invented
The mulberry-seller invented the silkworm
With silk, poetry made the girls’ wardrobe
For girls dressed in silk, the procuress invented the palace
where they betrayed the silkworm’s domicile
Distance invented the galloping charger
Speed, the chariot
And when defeat was invented
I was thrown in front of the speeding chariot
But by that time poetry had invented love
Love invented the heart
The heart made tent and canoes
and traversed far-off lands
The eunuch invented the fish-hook
and slipped away piercing it in the slumbering heart
To catch the line to which the heart was snared
Auction was invented
And tyranny invented the final bid
I bartered the whole of poetry for fire
and burnt the Tyrant’s hand
The Clay-mine
I work in a clay-mine
we are searched after work
our guards dislocate our every joint
Then we are put together
our guards do it callously;
The first day of work instead of my own
I was implanted with someone else’s part
And it goes on and on
until every single strand
has been relocated
Who knows
of those grafted to my miscellaneous parts
how many have died in mine-collapses
for stealing clay
immolated
Inside the clay-mine several items are proscribed
In the clay-mine water is prohibited
Water washes away the clay along with its authority
If the guards realize
we had had water before setting foot in the mine
we are put in the vice
and every last drop of water squeezed out
And for every drop of water recovered
a day’s wage lost
In the clay-mine fire blazes unbounded
No guards set limits on fire
Fire walls demarcate different sectors of the mine
I also labor between the four walls of fire
no labor could be performed without
In the clay-mine fire serves another end
Sometimes when the guards must suddenly vacate the mine
It is filled with fire
That day if one could get away with one’s life
One is not searched
That day alone could clay be stolen
I had stolen the clay one such day
I have put away that clay
One other such day when the fire was being pumped
I had stolen from the pile of useless parts
my nails and heart-line
and put them away too
Of such fires somehow I am always abreast
and on the lookout
I have spotted a leg on the refuse pile
which is not mine
but, nevertheless, shapely
At the next fire I shall carry it away
And something else after that—and after that something else
One day I shall construct of my choice a whole man
I am anxious about that whole man
who shall be completed one day
and will not work in the clay-mine
I shall steal clay for him
And will research
how the mine is set on fire
Shall set it afire
and steal clay
Enough clay for the man
to have a house, an urn to store water in, and a lamp
And shall steal fire for the lamp
Fire is not something you steal
But as needs grow one could steal anything
Then that man could endure to live with me
If one has a house, a store of water to drink from, and a lamp
One could put up with anyone
I shall invite him to break bread with me
and if the bread was short
I’d steal bread
Not that the guards grudge their leftovers
to laborers who do not cause stir in the mine
I never spoke a word inside the clay-mine
nor without
I shall teach my whole man my language and converse with h
im
I shall not discuss with him the clay-mine
I do not approve of people discussing work at home
I shall talk to him
about voyages of deep-seas
And if I could steal, and implant him with a throbbing heart
I shall talk with him of love
Of the girl whom I loved
Of the girl whom he shall love
I shall not keep him forever
No one could keep anyone forever
I shall encourage him to travel
and send him to the region
where trees grow out of the earth without rain
And he shall bring for me the seeds
to burgeon
that do not need moisture
Each day a seed
I shall sow in the clay-mine
Shall keep sowing
One day a season comes when a seed must sprout
In the clay-mine the seed sown by me shall germinate
and the plant sprout
My guards shall be greatly alarmed
They have never seen a tree
Greatly distressed, they shall take flight
Noticing a guard flee
I shall follow him to the other exit of the mine
with its exits exposed a mine holds no terrors
With my dread exorcised
I shall cross the walls of fire