Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

- Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

-Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

ग़म-ए-दुनिया से गर पायी भी फ़ुरसत सर उठाने की

ग़म-ए-दुनिया से गर पायी भी फ़ुरसत सर उठाने की
तो फिर कोशिश करेंगे हम भी कुछ कुछ मुस्कुराने की

सुनी थी बात घर की चाँद पर दादी के किस्सों में
हकीक़त हो ही जाएगी वहां अब आशियाने की

बशर के बीच पहले भेद करते हैं सियासतदां
ज़रूरत फिर जताते हैं किसी कौमी तराने की

वतन की नींव में मिटटी जमा है जिन शहीदों की
कभी भी भूल ना करना उन्हें तुम भूल जाने की

नगर में जब से बच्चे रह गए और गाँव में दादी
लगाये कौन फिर आवाज़ परियों को बुलाने की

जलायोगे दिए तूफां में अपने हौसलों के गर
कोई आंधी नहीं कर पायेगी हिम्मत बुझाने की

नदी के वेग को ज्यादा नहीं तुम बाँध पाओगे
जो हद हो जाएगी तो ठान लेगी सब मिटाने की

कहा तुमसे अगर कुछ तो उसे क्या मान लोगे तुम
शिकायत फिर तुम्हें मुझसे है क्यूँ कुछ ना बताने की

सभी रंग उनके चेहरे पर लगे हैं प्यार के खिलने
ज़रूरत ही नहीं उनको हिना के अब रचाने की

यही किस्मत है क्या सच्ची मोहब्बत करने वालों की
उन्हें बस ठोकरें मिलती रहें सारे ज़माने

---ममता_किरण

Offering Chant

All forms appearing in the vast three thousand worlds

I offer as the supreme mudra of body

Please grant the siddhi of unchanging form

All sound, and sources of sound, appearing in the vast three thousand worlds

I offer as the supreme mudra of speech

Please grant the siddhi of unimpeded speech

All the mind’s discursive thought in the vast three thousand worlds

I offer as the supreme mudra of mind

Please grant the siddhi of undeluded mind

All happiness and suffering in the vast three thousand worlds

I offer as the mudra of auspiciousness

May all the sky be pervaded by great bliss

If suffering, I bear the suffering of all beings

May the ocean of samsara’s suffering dry up.

--- Rain of Blessings: Vajra Chants (Music by Lama Gyurme. On Youtube)

Cry if you need to......

Cry if you need to......

Because it has lived its life intensely
the parched grass still attracts the gaze of passer-by
The flowers merely flower,
and they do this as well as they can.
The white lily, blooming unseen in the valley,
doesn't need to explain itself to anyone;
It lives merely for beauty.
Men, however, can not accept that 'merely'.

If tomatoes wanted to be melons,
they would look completely ridiculous.
I am always amazed
that so many people are concerned
with wanting to be what they are not ;
What's the point of making yourself look ridiculous ?

You don't always have to pretend to be strong,
there's no need to prove all the time that everything is going well,
You shouldn't be concerned about what other people are thinking
Cry if you need to
it's good to cry out all your tears
(because only then will you be able to smile again)

--- English translation of a poem by Japanese Poet Mitsuo Aida

The Martyr

(1)

Look how vast
his sheltering shade
spreads on the Earth
with humility
and with glory!

His hands
alike the branches of
the Holy Tree of Life
glows with the light of love.

His fearless revolt,
his far reaching revlot,
burned the gates of Hell
shook the walls of Hell.

Hi Death,
not from the cold lame of the awaiting razor blades
Or the sentinl of the poisoned swords:
His death landed on his shoulders,
like the spring's last sparrow,
from his smoky cloud of sorrow
running behind him for years.

And that fortress of might,
his Heart,
the Heart whose key,
the candid verse of amity,
collapsed onto itself,
But never fell apart.

(2)

In the era of forceful negation of love
entwined with himself,
with his captive voice:
He such became, himself,
The Anthem of Love.

And he such became,
he such became himself:
The Elegy of Love.

(3)

Look how chaste
Look how vast
he streams on the Earth
with humility and with glory!
And he such engraves
the effigy of nobility and of truth
on the heart of the rocks!

Look how pure he fades away in the Sea
with humility and with glory!

And look how gracious he kneels in front of your thighs
with humility and with glory!

Look!
His death was the birthday of so very many Knights.

---By Ahmad Shamlou
-Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani
The poem's original title translates as: "The Birth of the one who lovingly died on the Earth". It was first published in the anthology Abraham in Fire 1973, Tehran.

The Elegy

For Forough Farrokhzad's death

In the quest for you
I sobbed at the knees of the mount,
at the edge of the sea and the turf.

In the quest for you
I moaned with the wind.
Along the eroded face of the routes,
At the crossroad of seasons.

And over a broken window
which made a wooden frame
for the cloudy blues of the skies.
In hope of your image
How long, long, how long,
this frame will remain plain?

Your charm,
was allowing for the passage of the breeze
and of love, and also of death
which confided in you
their perpetual insights.

Hence you became a pearl
Immense, enviable and precious:
the treasure which bears, solely,
the entire delight of belonging to the land.

Your name is a sunrise,
shining over the vast front of the skies,
Be hallowed you name!

And we are still rotating nights and days,
in this elusive yet.

---By Ahmad Shamlou
- Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani
Translated from the poem "Marthieh" first published in the anthology Marthieh-hay Khak (Elegies of The Earth) 1956, Tehran.