शिकस्त

बारहा मुझसे कहा दिल ने कि ऐ शोब्दागर
तू कि अल्फ़ाज़ से अस्नामगरी करता है
कभी उस हुस्ने-दिलआरा की भी तस्वीर बना
जो तेरी सोच के ख़ाक़ों में लहू भरता है

बारहा दिल ने ये आवाज़ सुनी और चाहा
मान लूँ मुझसे जो विज्दान मेरा कहता है
लेकिन इस इज्ज़ से हारा मेरे फ़न का जादू
चाँद को चाँद से बढ़कर कोई क्या कहता है

--- अहमद फ़राज़

कठिन है राहगुज़र थोड़ी दूर साथ चलो

कठिन है राहगुज़र थोड़ी दूर साथ चलो
बहुत बड़ा है सफ़र थोड़ी दूर साथ चालो

तमाम उम्र कहाँ कोई साथ देता है
मैं जानता हूँ मगर थोड़ी दूर साथ चलो

नशे में चूर हूँ मैं भी तुम्हें भी होश नहीं
बड़ा मज़ा हो अगर थोड़ी दूर साथ चलो

ये एक शब की मुलाक़ात भी ग़नीमत है
किसे है कल की ख़बर थोड़ी दूर साथ चलो

अभी तो जाग रहे हैं चिराग़ राहों के
अभी है दूर सहर थोड़ी दूर साथ चलो

तवाफ़-ए-मन्ज़िल-ए-जानाँ हमें भी करना है
"फ़राज़" तुम भी अगर थोड़ी दूर साथ चलो

------ अहमद फ़राज़

I Know Tears

When your heart is
shaken about with tears...
What sould I be doing to help you out?
Even looking up at the sky...
My heart hurts as much as yours.

Something that you
don't have to get hurt over...
Everyone accidentally feels...
Just like the times
when you're surprised...
...by how cold the water really is.

Now, just being here right next to you...
It's all that I can do, and nothing else...
All the smiles that I can
make just for you, anytime...
...I'll embrace and send to
you, whenever you need it.

You can blieve it,
dreams will someday be reality...
Just for you and only for you...
It is okay to cry, because
deep inside that heart of yours...
...every piece of
sadness turns to wings...
...for you to fly.

--- Taken from the Original Translation of closing song of animation series Rurouni Kenshin.

Gypsy Woman

it’s not what you are running from

it’s where you are heading to,

the desire

the hope

you are one of a few,

needing to fulfill

inquisitive minds

exploring

the unknown

leaving the rest behind,

it’s blissful awareness of

everlasting anew,

a soul calls home

where all fresh dreams

go to brew

ambiguously,

it’s the untold story

that never would be

if not for the sacrifice

of two…

or three…

--- Kay.
Poem taken from her Blog.

On the South Downs

Light falls the rain
On link and laine,
After the burning day;
And the bright scene,
Blue, gold, and green,
Is blotted out in gray.

Not so will part
The glowing heart
With sunny hours gone by;
On cliff and hill
There lingers still
A light that cannot die.

Like a gold crown
Gorse decks the Down,
All sapphire lies the sea;
And incense sweet
Springs as our feet
Tread light the thymy lea.

Fade, vision bright!
Fall rain, fall night!
Forget, gray world, thy green!
For us, nor thee,
Can all days be
As though this had not been!

---Francis William Bourdillon (1852-1921)

Notes

2] laine: arable land at the foot of the Sussex Downs.

18] thymy lea: pasture fragrant with the herb thyme.

The Night has a Thousand Eyes

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

-- Francis William Bourdillon

Some People

Some people flee some other people.
In some country under a sun
and some clouds.

They abandon something close to all they’ve got,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now preens.

Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles.
The emptier they get, the heavier they grow.

What happens quietly: someone’s dropping from exhaustion.
What happens loudly: someone’s bread is ripped away,
someone tries to shake a limp child back to life.

Always another wrong road ahead of them,
always another wrong bridge
across an oddly reddish river.
Around them, some gunshots, now nearer, now farther away,
above them a plane seems to circle.

Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or a longer while.

Something else will happen, only where and what.
Someone will come at them, only when and who,
in how many shapes, with what intentions.
If he has a choice,
maybe he won’t be the enemy
and will let them live some sort of life.


--- Wislawa Szymborska
Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997(Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1998),
translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

Ozymandias

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

--- by Horace Smith.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

---by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Stolen Child

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

---William Butler Yeats