Baat karani mujhe mushkil kabhii aisi to na thii

बात करनी मुझे मुश्किल कभी ऎसी तो न थी
जैसी अब है तेरी महफ़िल कभी ऎसी तो न थी

ले गया छीन के कौन आज तेरा सब्र-ओ-करार
बेक़रारी तुझे ऐ दिल कभी ऎसी तो न थी

चश्म-इ-कातिल मेरी दुश्मन थी हमेशा लेकिन
जैसे अब हूँ गई कातिल कभी ऎसी तो न थी

उन की आँखों ने खुदा जाने किया क्या जादू
के तबीयत मेरी माँ'इल कभी ऎसी तो न थी

अक्स-इ-रुख-इ-यार ने किस से है तुझे चमकाया
ताब तुझ मैं माह-इ-कामिल कभी ऎसी तो न थी

क्या सबाब तू जो बिगड़ता है "ज़फर" से हर बार
खू तेरी हूर-इ-शमा_इल कभी ऎसी तो न थी

- Bahadur Shah Jafar

Epilogue

We all live in darkness, kept apart from each other
by walls easily crossed but full of fake doors;
money drawn for light spending on friends or love
......our arguments
about the inexhaustible don't even graze it
just when it's time to start talking again, and take
a different road to get to the same place.

We have to get used to knowing how
to live from day to day, each one on his own,
as in the best of all possible worlds.
Our dreams prove it: we're cut off.

We can feel for each other,
and that's more than enough: that's all, and it's hard
to bring our stories closer together
trimming off from the excess we are,
yo get our minds off the impossible and on the things
.......we have in common,
and not to insist, not to insist too much:
to be a good storyteller who plays his role
between clown and preacher.

- by Enrique Lihn

from The Dark Room and Other Poems; New Directions Books, 1963

Y bien, eso era todo. Véase Ud. de viejo

entre otros viejos de su edad, sentado

profundamente en una plaza pública.

Agita Ud. los pies, le tiembla un ojo,

lo evitan las palomas que comen a sus pies

el pan que Ud. les da para atraérselas.

Nadie lo reconoce, ni Ud. mismo

se reconoce cuando ve su sombra.

Lo hace llorar la música que nada le recuerda.

Vive de sus olvidos

en el abismo de una vieja casa.

¿Por qué pues no morir tranquilamente?

¿A qué viene todo esto?

Basta, cierre los ojos;

no se agite, tranquilo, basta, basta.

Basta, basta, tranquilo, aquí tiene la muerte.

The Rhodra

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.

-The Rhodora is an poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is a response to the question "whence is the flower". The poem is about the rhodora, a common flowering shrub, and the beauty of this shrub in its natural setting.