Howl

For Carl Solomon

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind;

streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer after noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-with-drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steamheat
and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp notism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong &
amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-
ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the
moon,

with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted
on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-
ing plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness!
Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!
Children screaming under the stairways!
Boys sobbing in armies!
Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch!
Nightmare of Moloch!
Moloch the loveless!
Mental Moloch!
Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison!
Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows!
Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war!
Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!
Moloch whose blood is running money!
Moloch whose fingers are ten armies!
Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!
Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog!
Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone!
Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks!
Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius!
Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely!
Moloch in whom I dream Angels!
Crazy in Moloch!
Cocksucker in Moloch!
Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early!
Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body!
Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon!
Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch!
Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible mad houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven!
Pavements, trees, radios, tons!
lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions!
the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies!
Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all!
the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside
O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here
O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a seajourney on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

---Allen Ginsberg.

Chakley

ये कूचे ये नीलामघर दिलक़शी के
ये लुटते हुए कारवां ज़िंदगी के
कहां हैं कहां हैं मुहाफ़िज़ ख़ुदी के
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

ये पुरपेंच गलियां ये बेख़्वाब बाज़ार
ये गुमनाम राही ये सिक्कों की झंकार
ये इस्मत के सौदे ये सौदों पे तकरार
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

तअफ्फुन से पुरनीम रौशन ये गलियां
ये मसली हुई अधखिली ज़र्द कलियां
ये बिकती हुई खोखली रंगरलियां
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

वो उजले दरीचों में पायल की छनछन
तऩफ्फ़ुस की उलझन पे तबले की धनधन
ये बेरूह कमरों में खांसी की धनधन
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

ये गूंजे हुए कहकहे रास्तों पर
ये चारों तरफ भीड़ सी खिड़कियों पर
ये आवाज़ें खिंचते हुए आंचलों पर
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

ये फूलों के गजरे ये पीकों के छींटे
ये बेबाक़ नज़रें ये गुस्ताख़ फ़िक़रे
ये ढलके बदन और ये मदक़ूक़ चेहरे
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

ये भूखी निगाहें हसीनों की जानिब
ये बढ़ते हुए हाथ सीनों की जानिब
लपकते हुए पांव ज़ीनों की जानिब
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

यहां पीर भी आ चुके हैं जवां भी
तनूमंद बेटे भी अब्बा मियां भी
ये बीवी भी है और बहन भी है मां भी
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

मदद चाहती है ये हव्वा की बेटी
यशोदा की हमजिंस राधा की बेटी
पयंबर की उम्मत ज़ुलेख़ा की बेटी
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

ज़रा मुल्क़ के रहबरों को बुलाओ
ये कूचे ये गलियां ये मंज़र दिखाओ
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ को लाओ
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ कहां हैं|

---साहिर लुधियानवी

Glossary:

कूचे = streets
नीलामघर = auction houses
मुहाफ़िज़ ख़ुदी के = the protectors of pride
सना-ख़्वाने-तक़दीसे-मशरिक़ = those who praise the pious eastern ways
बेख़्वाब = sleep-less
इस्मत = pride, honour
तकरार = fights, arguments
तअफ्फुन = bad smell, stink
पुरनीम रौशन = full of dimly lit
ज़र्द = yellowing
तऩफ्फ़ुस = breaths (life)
बेरूह = soul-less
कहकहे = laughters
मदक़ूक़ = diseased
जानिब = towards
ज़ीनों = stairs
पीर = old, wise
तनूमंद = healthy, fit
हमजिंस = breed
पयंबर = prophet
उम्मत = race
रहबरों = leaders

Brothels

These lanes, these marts of rich delights,
Precious lives, undone, defiled;
Where are the defenders of virtuous pride?
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

These sinuous streets, these doors ajar,
The clinking coins, the moving masks,
Deals of honour, hagglings fast,
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

These dimly-lighted, stinking streets,
These yellowing buds, crushed and ceased,
These hollow charms, for sale and lease;
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

The jingling trinklets at casement bright,
Tambourins athrob’ mid gasping life;
Cheerless rooms with cough alive;
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

Boisterous laughs on public paths,
Crowds at windows, thick and fast,
Vulgar words, obscene remarks;
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

The betel spittal, the floral wreaths,
Audacious looks and filthy speech,
Flaccid figures, looks diseased;
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

Lecherous eyes in beauty’s quest,
Extended hands chasing breasts,
Springing feet on stairs pressed;
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

This is the haven of young and old.
Aging sires and youngsters bold,
Wife, mother and sister — she plays a triple role.
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

Help, O Help, this daughter of Eve!
Radha’s child, Yashoda’s breed;
The prophet’s race, Zuleikha’s seed;
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

Call, O call the leaders wise
Let them see these streets, these sights,
Where are the champs of eastern pride?
Where are they who praise, the pious eastern ways?

Translation by K.C. Kanda first. The translation appeared in “Masterpieces of Urdu Nazm”, Sterling Paperbacks, published by Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi. ISBN 81 207 1952 2, Reprint 1998, 2000.

मैं पल-दो-पल का शायर हूँ

मैं पल-दो-पल का शायर हूँ, पल-दो-पल मेरी कहानी है ।
पल-दो-पल मेरी हस्ती है, पल-दो-पल मेरी जवानी है ॥


मुझ से पहले कितने शायर आए और आ कर चले गए,
कुछ आहें भर कर लौट गए, कुछ नग़में गा कर चले गए ।
वे भी एक पल का क़िस्सा थे, मैं भी एक पल का क़िस्सा हूँ,
कल तुम से जुदा हो जाऊंगा गो आज तुम्हारा हिस्सा हूँ ॥


मैं पल-दो-पल का शायर हूँ, पल-दो-पल मेरी कहानी है ।
पल-दो-पल मेरी हस्ती है, पल-दो-पल मेरी जवानी है ॥


कल और आएंगे नग़मों की खिलती कलियाँ चुनने वाले,
मुझसे बेहतर कहने वाले, तुमसे बेहतर सुनने वाले ।
कल कोई मुझ को याद करे, क्यों कोई मुझ को याद करे
मसरुफ़ ज़माना मेरे लिए, क्यों वक़्त अपना बरबाद करे ॥


मैं पल-दो-पल का शायर हूँ, पल-दो-पल मेरी कहानी है ।
पल-दो-पल मेरी हस्ती है, पल-दो-पल मेरी जवानी है ॥

--- साहिर लुधियानवी

नज़र ऐ-कॉलेज

ऐ सरज़मीन-ए-पाक़ के यारां-ए-नेक नाम
बा-सद-खलूस शायर-ए-आवारा का सलाम
ऐ वादी-ए-जमील मेंरे दिल की धडकनें
आदाब कह रही हैं तेरी बारगाह में

तू आज भी है मेरे लिए जन्नत-ए-ख़याल
हैं तुझ में दफन मेरी जवानी के चार साल
कुम्हलाये हैं यहाँ पे मेरी ज़िन्दगी के फूल
इन रास्तों में दफन हैं मेरी ख़ुशी के फूल

तेरी नवाजिशों को भुलाया न जाएगा
माजी का नक्श दिल से मिटाया न जाएगा
तेरी नशात खैज़-फ़ज़ा-ए-जवान की खैर
गुल हाय रंग-ओ-बू के हसीं कारवाँ की खैर

दौर-ए-खिजां में भी तेरी कलियाँ खिली रहे
ता-हश्र ये हसीं फज़ाएँ बसी रहे
हम एक ख़ार थे जो चमन से निकल गए
नंग-ए-वतन थे खुद ही वतन से निकल गए

गाये हैं फ़ज़ा में वफाओं के राग भी
नगमात आतिशें भी बिखेरी है आग भी
सरकश बने हैं गीत बगावत के गाये हैं
बरसों नए निजाम के नक्शे बनाए हैं

नगमा नशात-रूह का गाया है बारहा
गीतों में आंसूओं को छुपाया है बारहा
मासूमियों के जुर्म में बदनाम भी हुए
तेरे तुफैल मोरिद-ए-इलज़ाम भी हुए

इस सरज़मीन पे आज हम इक बार ही सही
दुनिया हमारे नाम से बेज़ार ही सही
लेकिन हम इन फ़ज़ाओं के पाले हुए तो हैं
गर यां नहीं तो यां से निकाले हुए तो हैं !

--- साहिर लुधियानवी

किताबें कुछ कहना चाहती हैं..

किताबें करती हैं बातें
बीते जमानों की,
दुनिया की, इंसानों की,
आज की, कल की,
एक-एक पल की,
गमों की, फूलों की,
बमों की, गनों की,
जीत की, हार की,
प्यार की, मार की।
क्या तुम नहीं सुनोगे
इन किताबों की बातें ?
किताबें कुछ कहना चाहती हैं
तुम्हारे पास रहना चाहती हैं
किताबों में चिड़िया चहचहाती हैं
किताबों में झरने गुनगुनाते हैं
परियों के किस्से सुनाते हैं
किताबों में रॉकेट का राज है
किताबों में साईंस की आवाज है
किताबों में ज्ञान की भरमार है
क्या तुम इस संसार में
नहीं जाना चाहोगे?
किताबें कुछ कहना चाहती हैं..
तुम्हारे पास रहना चाहती हैं।

--- सफदर हाशमी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

इन काली सदियों के सर से जब रात का आंचल ढलकेगा
जब दुख के बादल पिघलेंगे जब सुख का सागर झलकेगा
जब अम्बर झूम के नाचेगा जब धरती नगमे गाएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

जिस सुबह की ख़ातिर जुग जुग से हम सब मर मर के जीते हैं
जिस सुबह के अमृत की धुन में हम ज़हर के प्याले पीते हैं
इन भूखी प्यासी रूहों पर इक दिन तो करम फ़रमाएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

माना कि अभी तेरे मेरे अरमानों की क़ीमत कुछ भी नहीं
मिट्टी का भी है कुछ मोल मगर इन्सानों की क़ीमत कुछ भी नहीं
इन्सानों की इज्जत जब झूठे सिक्कों में न तोली जाएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

दौलत के लिए जब औरत की इस्मत को ना बेचा जाएगा
चाहत को ना कुचला जाएगा, इज्जत को न बेचा जाएगा
अपनी काली करतूतों पर जब ये दुनिया शर्माएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

बीतेंगे कभी तो दिन आख़िर ये भूख के और बेकारी के
टूटेंगे कभी तो बुत आख़िर दौलत की इजारादारी के
जब एक अनोखी दुनिया की बुनियाद उठाई जाएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

मजबूर बुढ़ापा जब सूनी राहों की धूल न फांकेगा
मासूम लड़कपन जब गंदी गलियों में भीख न मांगेगा
हक़ मांगने वालों को जिस दिन सूली न दिखाई जाएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

फ़आक़ों की चिताओ पर जिस दिन इन्सां न जलाए जाएंगे
सीने के दहकते दोज़ख में अरमां न जलाए जाएंगे
ये नरक से भी गंदी दुनिया, जब स्वर्ग बनाई जाएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

जिस सुबह की ख़ातिर जुग जुग से हम सब मर मर के जीते हैं
जिस सुबह के अमृत की धुन में हम ज़हर के प्याले पीते हैं
वो सुबह न आए आज मगर, वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

वो सुबह कभी तो आएगी

--- साहिर लुधियानवी

कुछ तो स्टैंडर्ड बनाओ

प्रकृति बदलती छण-छण देखो,
बदल रहे अणु, कण-कण देखो|
तुम निष्क्रिय से पड़े हुए हो |
भाग्य वाद पर अड़े हुए हो|

छोड़ो मित्र ! पुरानी डफली,
जीवन में परिवर्तन लाओ |
परंपरा से ऊंचे उठ कर,
कुछ तो स्टैंडर्ड बनाओ |

जब तक घर मे धन संपति हो,
बने रहो प्रिय आज्ञाकारी |
पढो, लिखो, शादी करवा लो ,
फिर मानो यह बात हमारी |

माता पिता से काट कनेक्शन,
अपना दड़बा अलग बसाओ |
कुछ तो स्टैंडर्ड बनाओ |

करो प्रार्थना, हे प्रभु हमको,
पैसे की है सख़्त ज़रूरत |
अर्थ समस्या हल हो जाए,
शीघ्र निकालो ऐसी सूरत |

हिन्दी के हिमायती बन कर,
संस्थाओं से नेह जोड़िये |
किंतु आपसी बातचीत में,
अंग्रेजी की टांग तोड़िये |

इसे प्रयोगवाद कहते हैं,
समझो गहराई में जाओ |
कुछ तो स्टैंडर्ड बनाओ |

कवि बनने की इच्छा हो तो,
यह भी कला बहुत मामूली |
नुस्खा बतलाता हूँ, लिख लो,
कविता क्या है, गाजर मूली |

कोश खोल कर रख लो आगे,
क्लिष्ट शब्द उसमें से चुन लो|
उन शब्दों का जाल बिछा कर,
चाहो जैसी कविता बुन लो |

श्रोता जिसका अर्थ समझ लें,
वह तो तुकबंदी है भाई |
जिसे स्वयं कवि समझ न पाए,
वह कविता है सबसे हाई |

इसी युक्ती से बनो महाकवि,
उसे "नई कविता" बतलाओ |
कुछ तो स्टैंडर्ड बनाओ |

चलते चलते मेन रोड पर,
फिल्मी गाने गा सकते हो |
चौराहे पर खड़े खड़े तुम,
चाट पकोड़ी खा सकते हो |

बड़े चलो उन्नति के पथ पर,
रोक सके किस का बल बूता?
यों प्रसिद्ध हो जाओ जैसे,
भारत में बाटा का जूता |

नई सभ्यता, नई संस्कृति,
के नित चमत्कार दिखलाओ |
कुछ तो स्टैंडर्ड बनाओ |

पिकनिक का जब मूड बने तो,
ताजमहल पर जा सकते हो |
शरद-पूर्णिमा दिखलाने को,
'उन्हें' साथ ले जा सकते हो |

वे देखें जिस समय चंद्रमा,
तब तुम निरखो सुघर चाँदनी |
फिर दोनों मिल कर के गाओ,
मधुर स्वरों में मधुर रागिनी |
( तू मेरा चाँद मैं तेरी चाँदनी ..)

आलू छोला, कोका-कोला,
'उनका' भोग लगा कर पाओ |
कुछ तो स्टैंडर्ड बनाओ|

--- काका हाथरसी