सितारों से आगे जहाँ और भी हैं

सितारों के आगे जहाँ और भी हैं
अभी इश्क़[1] के इम्तिहाँ[2] और भी हैं

तही ज़िन्दगी से नहीं ये फ़ज़ायें
यहाँ सैकड़ों कारवाँ और भी हैं

क़ना'अत[3]न कर आलम-ए-रंग-ओ-बू[4]पर
चमन और भी, आशियाँ[5]और भी हैं

अगर खो गया एक नशेमन तो क्या ग़म
मक़ामात-ए-आह-ओ-फ़ुग़ाँ[6]और भी हैं

तू शाहीं[7]है परवाज़[8]है काम तेरा
तेरे सामने आसमाँ और भी हैं

इसी रोज़-ओ-शब [9]में उलझ कर न रह जा
के तेरे ज़मीन-ओ-मकाँ [10]और भी हैं

गए दिन के तन्हा था मैं अंजुमन [11]में
यहाँ अब मेरे राज़दाँ [12]और भी हैं

--- अल्लामा इक़बाल

शब्दार्थ:
1 ↑ प्रेम
2 ↑ परीक्षाएँ
3 ↑ संतोष
4 ↑ इन्द्रीय संसार
5 ↑ घरौंदे
6 ↑ रोने-धोने की जगहें
7 ↑ गरुड़ , उक़ाब
8 ↑ उड़ान भरना
9 ↑ सुबह -शाम के चक्कर
10 ↑ धरती और मकान
11 ↑ महफ़िल
12 ↑ रहस्य जानने वाले

मैं सोच रहा,

मैं सोच रहा, सिर पर अपार
दिन, मास, वर्ष का धरे भार
पल, प्रतिपल का अंबार लगा
आखिर पाया तो क्या पाया?

जब तान छिड़ी, मैं बोल उठा
जब थाप पड़ी, पग डोल उठा
औरों के स्वर में स्वर भर कर
अब तक गाया तो क्या गाया? 

सब लुटा विश्व को रंक हुआ
रीता तब मेरा अंक हुआ
दाता से फिर याचक बनकर
कण-कण पाया तो क्या पाया? 

जिस ओर उठी अंगुली जग की
उस ओर मुड़ी गति भी पग की
जग के अंचल से बंधा हुआ
खिंचता आया तो क्या आया? 

जो वर्तमान ने उगल दिया
उसको भविष्य ने निगल लिया
है ज्ञान, सत्य ही श्रेष्ठ किंतु
जूठन खाया तो क्या खाया?

-- हरिशंकर परसाई

The Swallow

Oh, Swallow
As you depart our spring
slow down.
In the wood burner's exhaust pipe
as the firewood came inside,
you forgot your echo.

Oh, Swallow,
slow down.
With the feather in the
window, Swallow,

we adorned
the martyr's picture

and death flew out of the picture.

Slow down, Swallow.
The nest belongs
to whoever builds it.

---Hala Mohammad

सेलफ़ोन

आप अपने सेलफ़ोन पर बात करते हैं

करते रहते हैं,

करते जाते हैं

और हँसते हैं अपने सेलफ़ोन पर

यह न जानते हुए कि वह कैसे बना था

और यह तो और भी नहीं कि वह कैसे काम करता है

लेकिन इससे क्या फ़र्क़ पड़ता है

परेशानी की बात यह कि

आप नहीं जानते

जैसे मैं भी नहीं जानता था

कि कांगो में मौत के शिकार होते हैं बहुत से लोग

हज़ारों हज़ार

इस सेलफ़ोन की वजह से

वे मौत के मुँह में जाते हैं कांगो में

उसके पहाड़ों में कोल्टन होता है

(सोने और हीरे के अलावा)

जो काम आता है सेलफ़ोन के

कण्डेंसरों में

खनिजों पर क़ब्ज़ा करने के लिए

बहुराष्ट्रीय निगम

छेड़े रहते हैं एक अन्तहीन जंग

15 साल में 50 लाख मृतक

और वे नहीं चाहते कि यह बात

लोगों को पता चले

विशाल सम्पदा वाला देश

जिसकी आबादी त्रस्त है ग़रीबी से

दुनिया के 80 प्रतिशत कोल्टन के

भण्डार हैं कांगो में

कोल्टन वहाँ छिपा हुआ है

तीस हज़ार लाख वर्षों से

नोकिया, मोटरोला, कम्पाक, सोनी

ख़रीदते हैं कोल्टन

और पेंटागन भी, न्यूयॉर्क टाइम्स

कारपोरेशन भी,

और वे इसका पता नहीं चलने देना चाहते

वे नहीं चाहते कि युद्ध ख़त्म हो

ताकि कोल्टन को हथियाया जाना जारी रह सके

7 से 10 साल तक के बच्चे निकालते हैं कोल्टन

क्योंकि छोटे छेदों में आसानी से

समा जाते हैं

उनके छोटे शरीर

25 सेण्ट रोज़ाना की मजूरी पर

और झुण्ड के झुण्ड बच्चे मर जाते हैं

कोल्टन पाउडर के कारण

या चट्टानों पर चोट करने की वजह से

जो गिर पड़ती है उनके ऊपर

न्यूयॉर्क टाइम्स भी

नहीं चाहता कि यह बात पता चले

और इस तरह अज्ञात ही रहता है

बहुराष्ट्रीय कम्पनियों का

यह संगठित अपराध

बाइबिल में पहचाना गया है

सत्य और न्याय

और प्रेम और सत्य

तब उस सत्य की अहमियत में

जो हमें मुक्त करेगा

शामिल है कोल्टन का सत्य भी

कोल्टन जो आपके सेलफ़ोन के भीतर है

जिस पर आप बात करते हैं करते जाते हैं

और हँसते हैं सेलफ़ोन पर बात करते हुए

---एर्नेस्तो कार्देनाल
अनुवाद: मंगलेश डबराल

I Am Your Waiter Tonight And My Name Is Dmitri

I Am Your Waiter Tonight And My Name Is Dmitri
Is, more or less, the title of a poem by John Ashbery and has
No investment in the fact that you can get an adolescent
Of the human species to do almost anything (and when adolescence
In the human species ends is what The Fat Man in The Maltese Falcon
Calls, “a nice question, sir, a very nice question indeed”)
Which is why they are tromping down a road in Fallujah
In combat gear and a hundred and fifteen degrees of heat
This morning and why a young woman is strapping
Twenty pounds of explosives to her mortal body in Jerusalem.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Have I mentioned
That the other law of human nature is that human beings
Will do anything they see someone else do and someone
Will do almost anything? There is probably a waiter
In this country so clueless he wears a T-shirt in the gym
That says Da Meat Tree. Not our protagonist. American amnesia
Is such that he may very well be the great-grandson
Of the elder Karamazov brother who fled to the Middle West
With his girl friend Grushenka—he never killed his father,
It isn’t true that he killed his father—but his religion
Was that woman’s honey-colored head, an ideal tangible
Enough to die for, and he lived for it: in Buffalo,
New York, or Sandusky, Ohio. He never learned much English,
But he slept beside her in the night until she was an old woman
Who still knew her way to the Russian pharmacist
In a Chicago suburb where she could buy sachets of the herbs
Of the Russian summer that her coarse white nightgown
Smelled of as he fell asleep, though he smoked Turkish cigarettes
And could hardly smell. Grushenka got two boys out of her body,
One was born in 1894, the other in 1896,
The elder having died in the mud at the Battle of the Somme
From a piece of shrapnel manufactured by Alfred Nobel.
Metal traveling at that speed works amazing transformations
On the tissues of the human intestine; the other son worked
construction
The year his mother died. If they could have, they would have,
If not filled, half-filled her coffin with the petals
Of buckwheat flowers from which Crimean bees made the honey
Bought in the honey market in St. Petersburg (not far
From the place where Raskolnikov, himself an adolescent male,
Couldn’t kill the old moneylender without killing her saintly sister,
But killed her nevertheless in a fit of guilt and reasoning
Which went something like this: since the world
Evidently consists in the ravenous pursuit of wealth
And power and in the exploitation and prostitution
Of women, except the wholly self-sacrificing ones
Who make you crazy with guilt, and since I am going
To be the world, I might as well take an axe to the head
Of this woman who symbolizes both usury and the guilt
The virtue and suffering of women induces in men,
And be done with it). I frankly admit the syntax
Of that sentence, like the intestines slithering from the hands
Of the startled boys clutching their belly wounds
At the Somme, has escaped my grip. I step over it
Gingerly. Where were we? Not far from the honey market,
Which is not far from the hay market. It is important
To remember that the teeming cities of the nineteenth century
Were site central for horsewhipping. Humans had domesticated
The race of horses five thousand years before, harnessed them,
Trained them, whipped them mercilessly for recalcitrance
In Vienna, Prague, Naples, London, and Chicago, according
To the novels of the period which may have been noticing this
For the first time or registering an actual statistical increase
In either human brutality or the insurrectionary impulse
In horses, which were fed hay, so there ways, of course
In every European city a hay market like the one in which
Raskolnikov kissed the earth from a longing for salvation.
Grushenka, though Dostoevsky made her, probably did not
Have much use for novels of ideas. Her younger son,
A master carpenter, eventually took a degree in engineering
From Bucknell University. He married an Irish girl
From Vermont who was descended from the gardener
Of Emily Dickinson, but that’s another story. Their son
In Iwo Jima died. Gangrene. But he left behind, curled
In the body of the daughter of a Russian-Jewish cigar maker
From Minsk, the fetal curl of a being who became the lead dancer
In the Cleveland Ballet, radiant Tanya, who turned in
A bad knee sometime early 1971, just after her brother ate it
In Cao Dai Dien, for marriage and motherhood, which brings us
To our waiter, Dmitri, who, you will have noticed, is not in Bagdad.
He doesn’t even want to be an actor. He has been offered
Roles in several major motion pictures and refused them
Because he is, in fact, under contract to John Ashbery
Who is a sane and humane man and has no intention
Of releasing him from the poem. You can get killed out there.
He is allowed to go home for his mother’s birthday and she
Has described to him on the phone—a cell phone, he’s
Walking down Christopher Street with such an easy bearing
He could be St. Christopher bearing innocence across a river—
Having come across a lock, the delicate curl of a honey-
Colored lock of his great-grandmother’s Crimean-
Honey-bee-pollen. Russian-spring-wildflower-sachet-
Scented hair in the attic, where it released for her
In the July heat and rafter midsummer dark the memory
Of an odor like life itself carried to her on the wind.
Here is your sea bass with a light lemon and caper sauce.
Here is your dish of raspberries and chocolate; notice
Their subtle transfiguration of the colors of excrement and blood;
And here are the flecks of crystallized lavender that stipple it.

--- Robert Hass

Night After Night

Only a virgin can enter by a closed door
her own bedroom
in which everything that is called assurance
has long smelt of masturbation's sheets,
of violence, of spittle in a well or wreath of resin
flung voluntarily on the tower of man.
If he is a poet, all will be ruined,
if a murderer, then nakedness will reign here
and there will be an applauder,
an applauder hired from the marble quarries of Aeschylus.

---Vladimír Holan

Who are they and who are we?

Who are they and who are we?
They are the princes and the Sultans
They are the ones with wealth and power
And we are the impoverished and deprived
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is governing whom?
Who are they and who are we?

We are the constructing, we are the workers
We are Al-Sunna, We are Al-Fard
We are the people both height and breadth
From our health, the land raises
And by our sweat, the meadows turn green
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who serves whom?
Who are they and who are we?

They are the princes and the Sultans
They are the mansions and the cars
And the selected women
Consumerist animals
Their job is only to stuff their guts
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is eating whom?
Who are they and who are we?
We are the war, its stones and fire
We are the army liberating the land
We are the martyrs
Defeated or successful
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is killing whom?
Who are they and who are we?

They are the princes and the Sultans
They are mere images behind the music
They are the men of politics
Naturally, with blank brains
But with colorful decorative images
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who is betraying whom?
Who are they and who are we?

They are the princes and the Sultans
They wear the latest fashions
But we live seven in a single room
They eat beef and chicken
And we eat nothing but beans
They walk around in private planes
We get crammed in buses
Their lives are nice and flowery
They’re one specie; we are another
Use your mind, guess…
Guess who will defeat whom?

---Ahmed Fouad Negm, trans. Walaa Quisay