Can you imprison poetry?

‘While briefly chilled, I want to tell
without vengeance and what’s more with joy
how from my bed in Buenos Aires
the police took me to prison.
It was late, we had just arrived from Chile,
and without saying anything to us
they plundered my friend’s papers,
they offended the house in which I slept,
My wife vented her disdain
but there were orders to be executed
and in a moving car we roved about
the tyrannous black night.
They it was not Peron, it was another,
a new tyrant for Argentina
and by his orders doors opened,
bolt after bolt was unlocked
in order to swallow me, the patios passed,
forty bars and the infirmary,
but still they took me up into a cell,
the most impenetrable and hidden:
only there did they feel protected
from the exhalations of my poetry.’

--- Pablo Neruda

AUF WIEDERSEHEN (Until we meet again!)

Of the familiar words, that men repeat
At parting in the street.
Ah yes, till then! but when death intervening
Rends us asunder, with what ceaseless pain
We wait for the Again!

The friends who leave us do not feel the sorrow
Of parting, as we feel it, who must stay
Lamenting day by day,
And knowing, when we wake upon the morrow,
We shall not find in its accustomed place
The one beloved face.

It were a double grief, if the departed,
Being released from earth, should still retain
A sense of earthly pain;
It were a double grief, if the true-hearted,
Who loved us here, should on the farther shore
Remember us no more.

Believing, in the midst of our afflictions,
That death is a beginning, not an end,
We cry to them, and send
Farewells, that better might be called predictions,
Being fore-shadowings of the future, thrown
Into the vast Unknown.

Faith overleaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead
Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain
Until we meet again!


--- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Written in memory of the Poet's long time friend and publisher, Mr James T. Fields..)

आंसू

आंखों में पानी देख

 कहीं तुम्हे रोने का भ्रम ना हो जाए

 तुम नहीं जानते कि रोते हुए , 

आंसू बाहर नहीं अन्दर गिरते हैं 

 --- गुरमीत बराङ

Concert in the Garden

Concert in the Garden

It rained.
The hour is an enormous eye.
Inside it we come and go like reflections.
The river of music
enters my blood.
If I say body, it answers wind.
If I say earth, it answers where?

The world, a double blossom, opens:
sadness of having come,
joy of being here.

I walk lost in my own center.


by Octavio Paz
from The Collected Poems 1957-1987;
Carcanet Press Limited

Concierto en el Jardín

Llovío.
La hora es un ojo inmenso.
En ella andamos como reflejos.
El río de la música
entra en mi sangre.
Si digo: cuerpo, contesta: viento.
Si digo: tierra, contesta: ¿dónde?

Se abre, flor doble, el mundo:
tristeza de haber venido,
alegría de estar aquí.

Ando perdido en mi propio centro.

Octavio Paz

कभी ख़ुद पे, कभी हालात पे रोना आया

कभी ख़ुद पे, कभी हालात पे रोना आया ।
बात निकली तो हर एक बात पे रोना आया ॥

हम तो समझे थे कि हम भूल गए हैं उन को ।
क्या हुआ आज, यह किस बात पे रोना आया ?

किस लिए जीते हैं हम, किसके लिए जीते हैं ?
बारहा ऐसे सवालात पे रोना आया ॥

कौन रोता है किसी और की ख़ातिर, ऐ दोस्त !
सब को अपनी ही किसी बात पे रोना आया ॥

--- Sahir ludhianvi

कुछ इशारे थे जिन्हें दुनिया समझ बैठे थे हम

कुछ इशारे थे जिन्हें दुनिया समझ बैठे थे हम
उस निगाह-ए-आशना को क्या समझ बैठे थे हम

रफ़्ता रफ़्ता ग़ैर अपनी ही नज़र में हो गये
वाह री ग़फ़्लत तुझे अपना समझ बैठे थे हम

होश की तौफ़ीक़ भी कब अहल-ए-दिल को हो सकी
इश्क़ में अपने को दीवाना समझ बैठे थे हम

बेनियाज़ी को तेरी पाया सरासर सोज़-ओ-दर्द
तुझ को इक दुनिया से बेगाना समझ बैठे थे हम

भूल बैठी वो निगाह-ए-नाज़ अहद-ए-दोस्ती
उस को भी अपनी तबीयत का समझ बैठे थे हम

हुस्न को इक हुस्न की समझे नहीं और ऐ 'फ़िराक़'
मेहरबाँ नामेहरबाँ क्या क्या समझ बैठे थे हम |

--- Firaq Gorakhpuri

I Don't Wield Weapons:

I Don't Wield Weapons:
Mother
When I came out of your
womb no sword was gifted
nor gun
nor bomb;
you endowed me only a life.
Now
should I protest in regret
Condemning you
Pulling you out of the
grave!

--- Thoudam Netrajit Singh