Quatrains

I sent you a few words
ones that are now rare –
if they reach you one day,
hide them, there’s no way to understand me

the space that exists within a word
is like our home:
there are pictures, sounds, and gestures in it –
and yet we are forbidden to decipher it

for those who still believe in words:
silent is their surging core, pitch-dark is their heart of fire –
but when will we ever understand the sea?
and the eternal fire?

what do we find beyond words:
a flower garden? deep space?
in the garden, so many things are left unsaid
in space, so stark is the void

what else is left to cling on to? some words
insist on bursting through reality’s edge –
upon reaching the other shore, will it still be meaningful,
to you, everything I want to say?

in every word you read there are always
missing letters –
you will find them again someday
amidst thickets of memories.

by Sapardi Djoko Damono
translation: Hasif Amini and Sapardi Djoko Damono
from Hujan Bulan Juni
publisher: Grasindo, Jakarta, 1994

To the Choirmaster

The rock lives in the desert, solid, taking its time.
The wave lives for an instant, stable in momentum
at the edge of the sea, before it folds away.
Everything that is, lives and has size.
The mole sleeps in a hole of its making,
and the hole also lives; absence is not nothing.
It didn’t desire to be, but now it breathes
and makes a place, for the comfort of the mole.
I am a space taken, and my absence will be shapely
and of a certain age, in the everlasting.
In the fierce evening, on the mild day,
How long shall I be shaken?

-(Habakkuk)

by Paul Hoover
from Poetry Magazine,
June 2010

नसीब आज़माने के दिन आ रहे हैं

नसीब आज़माने के दिन आ रहे हैं
क़रीब उनके आने के दिन आ रहे हैं
जो दिल से कहा है जो दिल से सुना है
सब उनको सुनाने के दिन आ रहे हैं

अभी से दिल-ओ-जाँ सरे-राह रख दो
के लुटने लुटाने के दिन आ रहे हैं
टपकने लगी उन निगाहों से मस्ती
निगाहें चुराने के दिन आ रहे हैं

सबा फिर हमें पूछती फिर रही है
चमन को सजाने के दिन आ रहे हैं
चलो "फ़ैज़" फिर से कहीं दिल लगायेँ
सुना है ठिकाने के दिन आ रहे हैं

--- फ़ैज़ अहमद फ़ैज़
It is also used in the film In Custody (1993)
गायक: शंकर महादेवन
संगीतकार: उस्ताद जाकिर हुसैन और उस्ताद सुलतान खान