Modern Poetry of Pakistan
Page 8
Peerzada swoons with joy indeed,
When Bhutto calls him his Ganymede.
Mulla Whiskey then fills up his cup,
Though the drink is causing his head to flop.
He begins to clap quite like a clown,
When the crowd is about to shout him down.
And makes to walk as he prates his bit,
Stands up again when about to sit.
Translated from Punjabi by Waqas Khwaja
My Country Has Two Allahs
My country has two Allahs,
La ila and Martial Law!
One lives high above the skies,
The other on terra firma lies;
One is simply called Allah,
The other is named General Zia.
Three cheers for General Zia!
Bravo! Bravo! General Zia!
What fun for our lovely land,
Wherever we go armed forces stand.
It happened only yesterday,
And will again another day,
A hundred thousand quit the field,
To give up half their country’s land.
Three cheers for General Zia!
Bravo! Bravo! General Zia!
Translated from Punjabi by Waqas Khwaja
Partition
We may not say it but know it well,
You lost your way. We too.
Partition has destroyed us friends.
You too, and us.
The wakeful have quite plundered us.
You slept the while, and we.
Into the jaws of death alive
You were flung. We too.
Life still may stir in us again:
You are stunned yet, and we.
The redness of the eyes betrays
You too have wept, and we.
Translated from Punjabi by Waqas Khwaja
SHARIF KUNJAHI
Brother, Are You from Kunjah?
Brother, you’re from Kunjah, aren’t you?
Your name is Sharif?
I was just thinking, “He looks like him!”
What a blessed day this is—
God has united me with my brother.
Son, this is your uncle, your mother’s brother.
You may not have recognized me,
but when we were young we used to play together.
My name is Niyamatay—
I’m Mehr Nur Din’s granddaughter, his daughter’s daughter.
Kinship depends on keeping in touch,
just as a well is no well without water running below.
Time was, we used to visit there, occasionally, for days on end,
now I pine to even see those places—
and, do you know, mammi got really upset with us over me?
You tell me, brother, what was my fault in all this?
Who was dearer to me than my maternal relations?
But daughters don’t talk back to their parents,
they don’t undo the locks of their modesty.
And parents, too—who is more precious to them than their own children?
They can never think of doing any harm to them.
One may, however, slip into straitened circumstances.
When my father’s failing eyes defeated his will,
storms of hardships swept upon us.
Even my mother’s side started avoiding us.
Whenever they saw us,
instead of blooming with happiness, their faces pinched and hardened.
We were still unbaked vessels, and the fire was dying out—
everyone, everything, abandoned us.
His father clutched my father’s arm
and, dying, my father gave him his word.
True, there is no compatibility of age between us,
but brother, you are wise, you understand:
the daughter who doesn’t recognize her debt to her parents
is not fit to be considered human.
I just folded this thought in my heart and accepted the situation,
cultured the discarded milk the first wife had thrown up.
God approved of my patience
and blessed me with this son, lovely as the moon.
There it is, then, this is where I get off.
Why don’t you too join me today—
stay the night in the home of a long-forgotten sister?
Oh well! Those who live are likely to meet again.
Please give my deep regards to everyone.
Translated from Punjabi by Muhammad Shahid and Waqas Khwaja
My Words Are Odd
Today, I am wicked; today, I am a liar. My words are odd.
Virtue is retailed in your store; truth lies by your side.
If in such times too I were to sing songs of dancing eyes
and blow the conch of Balnath’s disciple wherever I go—
pretending to be the fictional Ranjha, break into the very home
where I visit on trust, spirit away its women
and, with illicit pleasure, praise in delicious detail,
from head to toe, each part and feature of their bodies—
then you will consider me worthy indeed and sing my praises
and fawn over each and every couplet of mine?
If I say that you and I are born of the same Adam,
why then should one suffer in labor and the other rest in ease?
If I say that no one should be homeless in the world
or that no one forced to drudge and grind in old age,
if I say that we should all share whatever coarse food and salt we have,
that we should be as arms to each other to ease our burdens,
if I say that we should put away all matters of conflict and quarrel,
resolve everything through discussion and not render ourselves mad and breathless,
then I am the wicked one, the liar, my words strange—
virtue retails at your store, truth lies by your side.
Translated from Punjabi by Muhammad Shahid and Waqas Khwaja
Traveler
Your body, a mulberry limb in bloom, your arms like slender branches,
your lips are flowers of caper, your youth, the grove’s shade.
This shade lasts not forever, only His name remains,
and Providence, my fair, has brought us to this town.
We will quickly spend the afternoon, we are not staying long:
we Yogis have no village or home, no place to sit and stay.
Who can settle down forever? This world is but an inn.
Like your youth, my fair, we are all traveling.
Translated from Punjabi by Muhammad Shahid and Waqas Khwaja
Tree of the Barren Waste
I am a leafy tree of the barren waste,
my shade is cool, my fruit sweet.
Wayfarer passing by,
tired and weary,
come, rest a while,
eat of my fruit,
sit in my shade.
I am a leafy tree of the barren waste,
my shade is cool.
What matter if the road lies all ahead?
What matter if the day is in decline?
Granted, life’s a baffling ordeal,
but burning thus beneath the sun,
swallowing dust,
makes little sense.
Those moments alone are pleasant
spent resting in the shade.
This shade, too, is brief,
brief like youth itself,
then leaves will fall—
come, now, and sit beneath them.
I am a leafy tree of the barren waste,
my shade is cool.
Translated from Punjabi by Muhammad Shahid and Waqas Khwaja
MEERAJI
Call of the Sea
Sounds whisper: “Come now, come! Years of calling
and calling have fatigued my soul.”
For a moment, for an age, I have heard those voices,
> which never tire of calling.
And now comes this curious voice:
“My sweet child, how I love you, see. But should you do this,
none would be harder on you than I.” “Lord! Lord!”
They always come, these voices, in every shape,
in sobs, smiles, or frowns.
Through them this brief life meets eternity.
But this strange voice, full of fatigue,
threatens always to drown all others.
Now the eyes know no flicker, the face wears neither smile nor frown,
only the ears go on listening.
Here is a rose garden, where winds ripple, buds open, blossoms yield fragrance,
flowers bloom, fade and fall, spreading a velvet floor
on which my longings move softly, like mythical fairies, mirrored in the garden—
a mirror in which each face appeared, settled, and dissolved forever.
The mountain is silent and still,
though some fountain, rising, might ask what lies beyond these rocky peaks.
But sufficient for me is the mountain’s foot—at the foot, in the valley
a stream carries a boat—another mirror
in which each face clearly surfaced and dissolved forever.
Here is a desert—vast, parched, leafless,
here whirlwinds house fierce spirits.
But I am far away, my eyes focused on a grove of trees.
Now there is no desert, no mountain, no rose garden,
in the eyes no life, on the face no smile or frown,
merely a strange voice droning that it is exhausted calling.
Voices always calling.
So the voice is a mirror—it is only I who am weary.
No desert, no mountain, no rose garden:
the sea alone calls me.
All comes from the sea, all will return.
Translated from Urdu by M.A.R. Habib
Strange Waves of Pleasure
I want the world’s eyes to watch me, as if
watching a tree’s tender branch,
(a tree’s tender, yielding branch),
its leafy burden heaped, like cast-off clothes, on the floor
beside the bed.
I wish the gusts of wind would embrace me over and over—
peevish, teasing, saying something laughingly,
hesitant, heavy with shyness, steadying themselves in amorous, honeyed, whispers.
I want to go on, walking, running,
just as the wind, rustling, caressing the stream’s surface,
continues to blow unceasingly.
If a bird should sing in charming notes,
let the warm waves of sound ring against my body and return, without pause.
Warm rays, gentle breezes,
sweet, enthralling words—
new things, ever new colors, that arise,
arise and dissolve in the surrounding air.
Let nothing cease within the circle of my rapture.
The circle shrinks,
the open field of wheat spreads out,
far out, the sky’s strange pavilion, transforming itself into an exotic bed,
tempts with seductive gestures.
The sound of lapping waves melts into birdsong, and slipping away
vanishes now from the eyes.
I am sitting,
my scarf slipped from my head.
I don’t care if anyone sees my hair!
The circle of pleasures contracts.
Let nothing new enter the circle of my rapture.
Translated from Urdu by M.A.R. Habib
Tall Building
Eyes painted in thousands on your face,
you are a standing monument
that guards the civilized,
your body moonlight,
a storm that wells up,
a whirlwind in man’s mind.
In the crashing waves
rage songs of tyranny,
a keening dirge
that lingers in the shadow of mourning,
words that speak without dreaming.
Is a soul lamenting restlessly in your heart?
The waves of your song weaken,
their ripples fade away. And I begin to see
dregs clouding bitter wine in a cracked cup.
Intoxication clouds my eyes.
Why does the night’s spilling darkness scare me so?
Your flickering eyes don’t:
I’ve lived in greater darkness,
And in this darkness of the soul, shone stars of sorrow;
And sometimes, every star, forgetfully, flared in flames of comfort
that leap, arms open, from your windows like the notes of your song,
as if drawn into the shawl of space.
I recall now the tears I spilled in desolation,
those tears, those flames of comfort.
But it was just a dream, and the leaping of flames was like a dream.
The wings of my imagination, like a bird’s broken wings,
fluttered uselessly.
The tension of my limbs would not let me breathe;
stirring just once, desire suggested to me the possibility of release.
But, alas, when grief was about to become its own medicine,
my shackles were lifted
to calm my nerves—
forgetting my tears, I recovered my lost spirit
and climbed that height
on which you stand blinking your innumerable eyes.
I had been told strange tales about you.
I had heard that your large body houses a bed
on which a delectable woman rests
her loneliness seeping into her mind like bland fatigue.
But she’s restless as she waits
for the curtain to move
and her dress to slide away like a cloud.
When an unknown man appears at the door
she doesn’t care
whether his manners please her or not
because she wants only one thing from him—
that he erects, from the sea of nerves,
a curious figure,
whose appearance is loathsome
and who, in a moment, becomes your adversary,
the brain seized by a storm,
and that woman, uninhibited, untainted, undesigning,
comes to resemble a falling wall.
Forgetting the song of her fatigue,
she knocks down
the soulless spectator of night like a palace of sand
with a brief movement of her eye;
the curious figure created by the sea of nerves,
collapses like a falling wall.
These tales, in the form of fleeting fragrances,
used to dance in my mind
whenever they wished.
Now in those innumerable eyes of yours
I see but one, shining.
Does the flame of comfort burn in that eye?
I want to close that eye with my hand, now.
Translated from Urdu by Geeta Patel
MAJEED AMJAD
An Individual
What can I accomplish in this vast order by my one act of goodness?
I can’t do more than that—
my whole world on a table:
paper, pen, and broken, shattered poems.
I have arranged them all neatly.
My heart is full of so many good things.
When I think of them, these very breaths seem priceless.
What strange things are these in which I find consolation!
Finding me true to the consolation,
all falsehoods come to attest my cause.
If only I were true,
those things arranged neatly in my world
would be replaced by disordered pieces,
pieces of my body beneath the rocking saw of black lies.
My one good deed could confront this vast order,<
br />
if I indeed were true.
Translated from Urdu by Mehr Afshan Farooqi
Little Children
Little children, I remember when I was your age,
how good they were who were older than we,
honest and gracious.
Little children, when you are as old as I am
those who were older than you
will have long since gone to sleep beneath the earth.
I wonder what you will think of us then?
Perhaps those days will be difficult, but you will at least remember
what a people they were who sank in their own blood
but let no harm come to this land
where today the gardens of your aspirations bloom.
Translated from Urdu by Mehr Afshan Farooqi
On the Radio, a Prisoner Speaks…
On the radio, a prisoner speaks to me: “I am safe!
Listen…I’m alive!”
Brother…so, who is he addressing? When are we alive?
Having traded your sacred life for this glittery existence,
we died a long while ago.
We are in this graveyard—
we don’t even look up from our graves.
What do we know of the lamps of lament
your heartbreaking cries have lit?
In their light the world is now trying to make out our names on these tombstones.
Translated from Urdu by Mehr Afshan Farooqi
A Cry
Black-beaked, with blue and yellow plumage,
the twittering lali cried, “Cheep, cheep!” “Tweet, tweet!”
Settling down, then suddenly taking off,
flying, wheeling in the air,
she alighted on a power line,
swaying on the swing of death.
A scream arose from my heart. I cried out,
loud as a kettledrum.
At my call the lali spread her wings and flew from the threshold of death,
that bird with the blue and yellow wings.