साँसों की परिधि

जैसे अन्धकार में
एक दीपक की लौ
और उसके वृत्त में करवट बदलता-सा
पीला अँधेरा।
वैसे ही
तुम्हारी गोल बाँहों के दायरे में
मुस्करा उठता है
दुनिया में सबसे उदास जीवन मेरा।
अक्सर सोचा करता हूँ
इतनी ही क्यों न हुई
आयु की परिधि और साँसों का घेरा।

--- दुष्यंत कुमार

Tonight I can write the saddest lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

---Pablo Neruda

The Wolf's Postcript to 'Little Red Riding Hood'

First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn't wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn't speak to strangers.

And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn't I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn't know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn't have swallowed her years before?

And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you'll agree she was pretty.

And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.

--- Agha Shahid Ali

Jodi Bheste Jaite Chao - Duel of Poets ( If You Wish to Go to Heaven)

SHISHWA (Disciple)
If you wish to go to heaven
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
If you want to be close to Allah
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
I'm just your daughter's age
I'll assume the side of shariah
And take an anti-Sufi stance
Don't take what I say to heart
You ignore the Holy Scriptures -
What kind of Muslims are you?

Why are the mullahs
always angry with you?
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
You need a measure of wisdom
to grasp the Koran and Hadith
How can half-read mullahs
interpret the intricate Scriptures?

They preach to others
without knowing the texts
The dogmatic mullahs
make their living from deception
Well fed and fattened, they use
their strength to abuse us
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
You Sufis chant Allah's name
Ignoring creed and prayer

You smoke pot during Ramadan
With the excuse of meditation
What kind of Islamic creed
Sanctions this immorality?
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
Just showing off your rituals
Is that true namaz?
Namaz is meditation,
To attain tranquility

Fasting is self control
How many really follow that?
They skip their meals by day
And eat double by night

We don't lust for heaven
And have no fear of hell
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
You don't go on pilgrimage
You don't give charity
What do you have against
Ritual sacrifice?
Why should Muslims
Quaver at the sight of blood?

GURU (Teacher)
You're asked to sacrifice
Your dearest ones
Are these cows and goats
Your most beloved?

Nothing is dearer than yourself
The supreme sacrifice is self sacrifice
If you can, restrain your senses
Control your passions
Keep love within your heart

SHISHWA (Disciple)
You roam around with women
Without wedding them
You sing and dance together
Without shame

The outside world is for men
The woman's place is at home
Keep fear of Allah in your heart

GURU (Teacher)
Woman is the seed of life
The source of creation
Those who believe in inequality
Lock women into marriage

Woman is the vessel of love
Woman is the Mother
Without Woman we would not
Come into being

(Together)
You need both man and woman
For procreation and creation
Keep love inside your heart

If you want to be close to Allah
Keep love inside your heart

--- Source. Selected Song Texts from the Film Matir Moina and Listen to song in youtube.

Poem

So what, if you've written a poem?!
Somebody says it's lovely,
Someone else says it's awful.
Someone coughs,
Someone groans.
The sun has no idea
About the lovely poem.
Nor does the cat
Nor the mouse.
And the house is still made of stone,
The table- of wood.
But the water
which I drink from a glass
Is suddenly sweet,
And green as grass.
I lift it high
Higher than my hair
And fall three times
To my knees then and there,
And kiss the table
and kiss the house!
and search every cranny
for that little mouse.

--- By Reyzl Zhychlinska
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

--- Langston Hughes

I am Goya

I am Goya
of the bare field, by the enemy’s beak gouged
till the craters of my eyes gape
I am grief

I am the tongue
of war, the embers of cities
on the snows of the year 1941
I am hunger

I am the gullet
of a woman hanged whose body like a bell
tolled over a blank square
I am Goya

O grapes of wrath!
I have hurled westward
the ashes of the uninvited guest!
and hammered stars into the unforgetting sky – like nails
I am Goya

---Andrey Voznesensky
(translated from the Russian by Stanley Kunitz)