Modern Poetry of Pakistan
Page 6
Who plotted? Who laid it waste? It was your eyes.
O Marghalaray! My pearl! My life for a glimpse of you!
But the eyes of Kashmala are something else again.
They promise but have no power of speech—
O my love, your eyes are without the means to speak.
How can he conceal his feelings from the world?
The eyes of Samandar well up perpetually.
Translated from Pashto by Sher Zaman Taizi and Pervez Sheikh
AMIR HAMZA KHAN SHINWARI
Ghazal: I Learned to Bow When I Lost My Head
I learned to bow when I lost my head.
Love saw failure of prudence, with all hope gone.
My hidden faults surfaced in the light of your love.
Motes are not visible without the sun.
You came in the night, left in the night, and it is still night.
I did not realize this night had no end.
Nothing but a mocking smile for me?
My tears have made no impression on you.
My desire for you thrust me before the dog.
I thought no warden stood guard at your door.
Your cheeks glowed at the sight of my portrait—
Whoever said the blind cannot see!
Two eyes, he said, together see one object,
Is it Hamza’s double vision or your duplicity?
Translated from Pashto by Sher Zaman Taizi and Pervez Sheikh
Ghazal: I Seek a Simple Definition of Fate
I seek a simple definition of fate:
the mirror of artifice I seek.
I seek neither fate nor artifice,
but knowledge of love and beauty I seek.
The languorous stretching of my lover at dawn—
for a lifetime of sleepless nights I seek.
For me the calamity of her coiling hair.
Mad that I am, these binding chains I seek.
I dreamed both worlds were but an illusion.
An interpretation of this dream I seek.
I am weary of this utter silence—
your picture to converse with I seek.
One who will instruct me in the mysteries of the self,
O love, in you such a guide I seek.
Fair faces no longer interest my eyes:
in all I see, your peer I seek.
I questioned her about the breaking of hearts.
You weep, she said, to repair the heart I seek.
Today, unexpectedly, you asked how I was.
Some time to compose my answer I seek.
What matter, if I vanquish your world?
To conquer my own world I seek.
I peer through your hair to glimpse your face:
the state of Kashmir from the Hindu I seek!
O Hamza! Your words may be eloquent indeed,
the fulfillment of intention is what I seek.
Translated from Pashto by Pervez Sheikh
Ghazal: I Shall Always Go with the Brave Pukhtun
I shall always go with the brave Pukhtun—
a Pukhtun, I with Pukhto will go.
O nation’s sun! Like morning dew,
I with your scorching rays would go.
They who threw caution to the wind for their nation,
I too with the delirious like these would go.
Beware! I am not the evil eye that
with the smoke of wild rue I would go.
Strangers call it the language of Hell—
but to Paradise I with Pukhto would go.
I am not the sun that cannot return,
but with the inclination of the day I go.
The heritage of my past lies still in the east:
I am not the sun that to the west would go.
If the youth bloom into the world of Pukhtun
then I with these brave young spirits would go.
To the future I bring traditions of the past,
to both with the pomp of the present I go.
Unless I bring the Pukhtun together,
with jirgas I to every tapa would go.
O Hamza! The journey may be to the Hejaz,
but I with the caravan of Pukhtun will go!
Translated from Pashto by Pervez Sheikh
Ghazal: Since I Have Known Your Benevolence
Since I have known your benevolence,
humility has overcome in me both conceit and caprice.
I am revealed to myself gradually,
myself the secret at the heart of the universe.
Beware of those who make eyes at you, my dear.
I too have my eye on them, and you, through the day.
Foolish to worry about sorrows as the end draws near,
since the end was known from the very beginning.
I am neither mortal nor one who returns,
but the sound of an echo that sweeps across the desert.
Good or bad, you made me who I am.
Please tell me, then, where lies my fault?
You remain captive to the twisting curls of your hair.
Hamza, he is miles away from you!
Translated from Pashto by Sher Zaman Taizi and Pervez Sheikh
Ghazal: To Whomever You Belong, I Long for You
To whomever you belong, I long for you.
I praise you because I belong to you.
The light in your enchanting eyes
is a reflection of the way I imagine you.
When you appeared, I forgot what I wanted to say,
but I remember something I had meant to say.
I swear by the strands of your sinuous hair,
I am a fettered slave to you.
I know not what or who I am,
as I stare at the spectacle of the world.
A sardonic smile plays on your lips—
but see, I weep, so it seems to you.
Come, my heart, let’s enjoy the world,
the world that inhabits her scornful eye!
Why turn to look at me again and yet again?
To make amends? Go on, rest content—I do not sigh.
That every face looks familiar to me
might be because I am so close to you.
Love finds comfort in discontent and distress.
Like a millstone I go around the same axis.
O Hamza! When I saw your peerless beauty,
I knew in that moment I belonged to you.
Translated from Pashto by Sher Zaman Taizi and Pervez Sheikh
N. M. RASHID
Afraid of Life?
Are you afraid of life?
You are life; I, too, am life.
Are you afraid of man?
You are man; I, too, am man.
Man is language, man is speech.
You are not afraid of man.
To the affinity of word and sense
man is attached.
To the hem of man’s garment, life is attached.
You are not afraid of that!
The unsaid, then—are you afraid of it?
The moment that has not yet come, are you afraid of it?
The awareness of its approach, are you afraid of it?
Earlier, too, have passed by
seasons of unworthiness, of God’s, and nature’s, blamelessness.
Do you then still believe it is worthless to desire,
that this night when the tongue is silenced is God’s decree?
But what would you know?
If lips don’t move, hands come alive,
hands come alive as a sign along the way,
as a tongue of pure light—
hands break into speech as the morning call for prayer.
Are you afraid of light?
You are light; I, too, am light.
You are afraid of light?
From city walls
the demon’s spell that lay on them is cleansed at last,
the robe of night
is split at last, is dust at last.
Fr
om the dragon of human multitudes comes a singular cry,
the call of self,
as if on desire’s path the traveler’s blood leaps,
a new madness springs.
People spill over,
people laugh, look! Cities hum again with life, look!
Is it the present that alarms you?
The “now,” yes, which you are too, which I am too?
It is the present that alarms you!
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
Death of Israfil
Weep for the death of Israfil.
He, the companion of gods, master of discourse,
immortal soul of the human voice,
boundless song of heavens,
still, today, like an incomplete word.
Weep for the death of Israfil!
Come, let us shed tears at this untimely vision of Israfil
recumbent beside his trumpet,
as if a tempest had tossed him to the shore.
Silent, in gleaming sunlight, on the sandy beach,
he lies asleep beside his horn.
His headdress, his locks, his beard,
how tarnished with dust!
How that trumpet of his, from which once flowed
life and death, lies far from his lips,
lost in its own screams, its wails,
the instrument that once lit up temples and altars.
Weep for Israfil,
a roar embodied, a song incarnate,
a sign of heavenly sounds from eternity to eternity.
At Israfil’s death,
row after row of angels mourn,
the son of Adam, head in the dust, wastes away,
God’s eyes flow with grief.
Not a sound from the skies,
no trumpet call from the mystic worlds.
With Israfil’s death,
the provisions of sound are closed to this world,
provisions for minstrels, for musical instruments.
How will the singer now sing, and what will that song be?
The heartstrings of the listeners, mute!
What moves will a dancer make, what steps rehearse?
The assembly’s floor, its walls and doors, mute!
What will the city’s preacher say now?
The thresholds of the mosques, their domes and minarets, mute!
What snare will the hunter of thought lay?
The birds of brook and mountain, mute!
The death of Israfil is
the death of ears that hear, of lips that speak,
the death of the eye that perceives, the heart that is wise.
Because of him was all the hum and howl of dervishes,
conference between the gentle-hearted—
the gentle-hearted who have this day retired, a note stuck in their throats.
Gone now the song of praise, the sacred recitation,
the approach to every street and lane now gone,
this last refuge, gone!
With Israfil’s death,
this world’s time, it seems, has gone to sleep, has turned to stone,
as if someone had swallowed entire all the sounds.
Such loneliness, not even beauty’s perfection haunts the mind—
such silence, one cannot recall even one’s own name!
With Israfil’s death,
the world’s tyrants will be left only to dream
of suppressing speech,
of that sovereign power in which, at least,
whispers of the oppressed can be heard.
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
Hassan the Potter
I
Jahanzad, below in the street, before your door
Here I stand, heart on fire, Hassan the potter!
This morning in the market, at old man
Yousuf the perfumer’s shop, I saw you,
and in your eyes was that fire
Longing for which I have wandered mad for nine years;
Jahanzad, for nine years I have wandered mad!
Lost in that desire,
I never turned toward my sad pots,
those images of my restless hands
lifeless creations of dust and color and oil,
who now whisper:
“Where is Hassan the potter?
Creating us, he’s become a god!”
Jahanzad, nine years passed over me
as time treads over some buried city:
Dust in flowerpots
whose fragrance I would fondly breathe
now laden with stones:
Goblet, enamel, cup, pitcher, lantern, flower-vase
All hope of an art of expressing
my worthless existence
lay dead,
and I, Hassan the potter, dust on my head,
disheveled hair, prostrate on the potter’s wheel
like some downcast god
creating pots in a dream world of being and nothing,
saw, in your bright eyes of Caucasus
that fire
through which my body and soul became travelers
through cloud and moonlight.
Jahanzad, that dreamy night in Baghdad,
the bank of the river Tigris,
the ship, the closed eyes of that sailor:
For some weary, grief-laden potter
one night alone was alive,
which even now claims his
spirit, his body;
only one night’s joy the river’s wave granted
in which Hassan the potter sunk, never to surface.
And now, Jahanzad, each day
that unlucky fortune comes to haunt me,
prostrated on the potter’s wheel,
it shakes me by the shoulders
(that wheel which year to year was my only hope of livelihood):
“Hassan the potter, come to your senses!
Cast an eye on your desolate house.
How shall these children be fed?
Hassan, love-struck fool!
Leave that sport of the rich
and look to your own house.”
In my ear that rebuking voice resounded
as if calling down a whirlpool to a drowning man.
Yes, that lake of tears was a lake of flowers;
but I, Hassan the potter, was enchanted
by ruins of the city of illusions,
with no sound, no motion,
no shadow of a bird in flight,
no trace of life.
Jahanzad, in your street today,
against night’s chilling darkness,
I stand restless before your door:
Through the window, those enchanting eyes
gaze at me again.
The age, Jahanzad, is a potter’s wheel on which,
like enamel, cup, pitcher,
lantern and flower-vase,
humans are created and destroyed.
I am human, yet
these nine years have passed in the shape of grief:
Hassan the potter is today a heap of dust
without a sign of moisture.
Jahanzad, this morning in the bazaar at
the perfumer Yousuf’s shop, your eyes
have spoken once again
breathing moisture into dust:
Perhaps this dust will waken into clay.
Who knows the expanse of desire, Jahanzad, but
if you wish, I’ll become once more
that same potter whose pots
were the pride of every palace and quarter, every city and village,
brightening the dwellings of both rich and poor.
Who knows the expanse of desire, Jahanzad, but
if you wish, I’ll turn once more toward my sad pots,
those dried pans of being and nothing,
toward hope of an art to mirror my livelihood:
From that being and nothing, from that color and oil,
to strike again t
hose sparks by which
the ruins of hearts are illumined.
II
Jahanzad,
how shall I forget
the wayward delight of that one night?
Was it wine or the trembling of my hand
caused a glass to topple and break
you were hardly surprised:
Your glass had suffered cracks before!
Jahanzad,
returning from Baghdad to
these pots, these earthen pans,
I reflect upon how you’ve been a mirror before me,
in public, at the window, at the head of an ermine bed—
a mirror, where nothing
has surfaced but
my own face,
fear of my own pathetic solitude.
As I write to you,
that mirror and its one face
lie in my hand.
And why should this mirror, my tablet, not be
Etched with tears?
Jahanzad,
will you ever bring to me again
the delights of that wanton night?
Time
is the moth, crawling
on walls, mirrors, cups, glasses,
on my jars, pitchers, and pans.
Like crawling time, perhaps
Hassan the potter will return, his soul burning.
Returning, I wonder
if I’m not the web of the spider deprivation,
being woven on this cottage roof,
this dark cottage where I muse, prostrate.
My poor ancestors
left only one trace.
This is the story of their craft, their livelihood.
Now that I have returned, that luckless fortune
comes to stare at me
and will not cease.