Refinement by Reading your Body

The day the conversation ended
Between your breasts awash in water
And the tribes that battled over water,
That day ended our Golden Age
And began the Age of Decay.
The rainclouds went on strike and said no rain
For the next five hundred years
The spring birds went on strike and stopped all flying
And the ears of grain abstained from procreation
And the fertile crescent moon took on the shape
Of a bottle full of crude oil.

The day they exiled me from the tribe
For leaving a poem and a rose
At the doorflap of your tent,
That day ended our Golden Age
And began the Age of Decay
An age that knew its grammar and syntax
But not a thing of womanhood,
The generations of degeneration
And the erasure of all women's names
From the memory of the nation.

Oh darling
What kind of nation is this,
Policing love like a dirty cop,
Considering the rose
A conspiracy against the regime,
Considering the poem
A manifesto of the underground?
What kind of nation is this
In the form of a yellow locust
Crawling out on its gut from the ocean to the Gulf
From the Gulf to the ocean,
Talking like a holy man all day
And woozy over a woman's navel all night?

What kind of nation is this?
Deleting love's material from curricula.
Deleting poetry,
And women's eyes.
What kind of nation is this?
Going to war with every raincloud,
Opening a classified file for every breast
And filing a police report for every rose.

Oh darling
What are we to do in this nation?
This nation that dare not see its body in the mirror
For fear of craving it?
That dare not hear a woman's voice on the phone
For fear of being too impure to pray?
What are we to do in this nation
That knows all there is to know
Of the October revolution,
Of the Zanj slaves who rose against their Caliph master
Of the Karmathians who stood against the Caliph's armies
And still keeps talking down to women like some Sheikh?
What are we to do in this nation
Between the works of Imam Ash-Shafi'i... and the works of Lenin
Between Qur'anic exegeses.... and Playboy magazines
Between Mu'tazilism... and the music of The Beatles?

O darling dumbfounder, you
Who amaze me like a child's toy,
I feel civilized
For loving you.
I call my poems historical
Because they have been your contemporaries.
All time before your eyes had yet to be,
All time after them went to pieces.
Do not ask me why I'm with you.
I just want an escape from being backwater,
To re-enter the time of water,
I want to defect from the Republic of Thirst,
To leave my backward desert life,
To sit beneath the trees
And bathe in springwater
And learn the names of the flowers.

I want you to teach me to read and write
For writing on your body is the ABC
Of entry into civilization.
Your body is not counterculture.
No, it is culture incarnate.
Whoever does not read the notebooks of your body
Will spend his life illiterate.

--- Nizar Qabbani
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Why

Why do you ask me to write to you?
Why do you ask me
To go naked before you
Like a paleolithic?
Writing is the one thing that leaves me naked.
When I speak
I keep somewhat clad.
When I write
I roam light,
Free as a legendary bird.
When I write
I divorce myself from history
And from earth's gravity
To orbit in the outer space of your eyes.

--- Nizar Qabbani
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

We Won’t Look Truth in the Eye

Truth has no eyes
no face
no tongue

truth is wingless
it doesn’t live
beyond the seven seas hills forests

I think that truth
is more like a nagging growth
that gnaws inside

I think it’s
that sticky thing
rolled into a ball somewhere under your skin
it hates comfort
it suddenly swells
and sends out desperate signals
dark ones like a deaf-mute’s moving hands

it hurts
it chokes
you can’t keep quiet any longer

you scream

---Urszula Koziol
(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh;

The Dream

I had the dream where you read your own poems,
Like those written sometime ago,
only these were in the grey book
written after death…

And you look finer, paler and tinier every passing moment,
Then you disappeare.

The last to vanish were your hands
And only the poems were left unharmed
And in the poems was left
someone’s heart.

--- Grazyna Chrostowska


(Translated by Jarek Gajewski)

Dedication

You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.

What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,
Blind force with accomplished shape.

Here is the valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge
Going into white fog. Here is a broken city,
And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave
When I am talking with you.

What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation.

They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
So that you should visit us no more.

--- Czeslaw Milosz

Proofs

Death will not correct
a single line of verse
she is no proof-reader
she is no sympathetic
lady editor

a bad metaphor is immortal

a shoddy poet who has died
is a shoddy dead poet

a bore bores after death
a fool keeps up his foolish chatter
from beyond the grave

--- Tadeusz Rozewicz

(Translated by Adam Czerniawski;)

मन बहुत सोचता है

मन बहुत सोचता है कि उदास न हो
पर उदासी के बिना रहा कैसे जाय?

शहर के दूर के तनाव-दबाव कोई सह भी ले,
पर यह अपने ही रचे एकांत का दबाव सहा कैसे जाय!

नील आकाश, तैरते-से-मेघ के टुकड़े,
खुली घासों में दौड़ती मेघ-छायाएँ,
पहाड़ी नदी : पारदर्शी पानी,
धूप-धुले तल के रंगारंग पत्थर,
सब देख बहुत गहरे कहीं जो उठे,
वह कहूँ भी तो सुनने को कोई पास न हो-
इसी पर जो जी में उठे वह कहा कैसे जाय!

मन बहुत सोचता है कि उदास न हो, न हो,
पर उदासी के बिना रहा कैसे जाय!

--- अज्ञेय

बहुत पहले से ...

बहुत पहले से उन क़दमों की आहट जान लेते हैं
तुझे ऐ ज़िन्दगी हम दूर से पहचान लेते हैं

मेरी नज़रें भी ऐसे काफिरों कि जानो-ईमान हैं
निगाहें मिलते ही जो जान और ईमान लेते हैं

जिसे कहती है दुनिया कामयाबी वाये नादानी
उसे किन कीमतों पर कामयाब इंसान लेते हैं

निगाहें बादागूं यूँ तो तेरी बातों का क्या कहना
तेरी हर बात लेकिन अह्तियातन छान लेते हैं

तबियत अपनी घबराती है जब सुनसान रातों में
हम ऐसे में तेरी यादों की चादर तान लेते हैं

खुद अपना फैसला भी इश्क में काफी नहीं होता
उसे भी कैसे कर गुजरें जो दिल में ठान लेते हैं

हयाते इश्क का इक इक नफास जामे शहादत है
वो जाने-नाज़ बर दारां कोई आसन लेते हैं

हम आहंगी में भी इक चाशनी है इख्तिलाफों की
मेरी बातें बउन्वाने दीगर वो मान लेते हैं

तेरी मकबूलियत कि वजह वाहिद तेरी राम्ज़ियत
कि उस को मानते कब हैं जिसको जान लेते हैं

अब इस को कुफ्र मानें या बुलंदी-ए-नज़र जानें
खुदा-ए-दोजहां को दे के हम इंसान लेते हैं

जिसे सूरत बताते हैं पता देती है सीरत का
इबारत देख कर जिस तरह मानी जान लेते हैं

तुझे घाटा न होने देंगे कारोबारे उल्फत में
हम अपने सर तेरा ऐ दोस्त हर नुक्सान लेते हैं

हमारी हर नज़र तुझसे नई सौगंध खाती है
तो तेरी हर नज़र से हम नया पैमान लेते हैं

रफ़ीके ज़िन्दगी थी अब अनीसे वक्ते-आखिर है
तेरा ऐ मौत हम ये दूसरा एहसान लेते हैं

ज़माना वारिदाते-कल्ब सुनने को तरसता है
उसी से तो सर आँखों पर मेरा दीवान लेते हैं

फ़िराक अक्सर बदल कर भेस मिलता है कोई काफिर
कभी हम जान लेते हैं कभी पहचान लेते हैं.

---फ़िराक़ गोरखपुरी

कुछ तो मजबूरियाँ रही होंगी

कुछ तो मजबूरियाँ रही होंगी
यूँ कोई बेवफ़ा नहीं होता

जी बहुत चाहता है सच बोलें
क्या करें हौसला नहीं होता

अपना दिल भी टटोल कर देखो
फासला बेवजह नही होता

कोई काँटा चुभा नहीं होता
दिल अगर फूल सा नहीं होता

गुफ़्तगू उनसे रोज़ होती है
मुद्दतों सामना नहीं होता

रात का इंतज़ार कौन करे
आज कल दिन में क्या नहीं होता.

--बशीर बद्र

रोने से और इशक़ में बेबाक हो गए

रोने से और इशक़ में बेबाक हो गए
धोये गए हम ऐसे हे बस पाक हो गए

कहता है कौन नाला-ए-बुलबुल को बेअसर
पर्दे में गुल के लाख जिगर चाक हो गए

पूछे है क्या वजूदो-अदम अहले-शौक का
आप अपनी आग से खसो-ख़ाशाक हो गए

करने गए थे उससे तगाफुल का हम गिला
की एक ही निगाह की बस ख़ाक हो गए

इस रंग से उठायी कल उसने 'असद' की लाश
दुश्मन भी जिसको देख के गमनाक हो गए

---'असद'


Glossary:
नाला-ए-बुलबुल : sound of bulbul
चाक : break
वजूदो-अदम अहले-शौक : why you ask about the life and death of a lover
खसो-ख़ाशाक : trash
तगाफुल : negligence