4 दिसंबर 2010

The Bridge Poem

I’ve had enough
I’m sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody
Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?

I explain my mother to my father
my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother
my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks
the Black church folks to the ex-hippies
the ex-hippies to the Black separatists
the Black separatists to the artists
the artists to my friends’ parents…

Then
I’ve got to explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I’m sick of it.

I’m sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
the isolation of your self-imposed limitations

Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners

Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches

Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your humanness

I’m sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I’m sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful

---by Donna Kate Rushin

From This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherrie Moraga & Gloria Anzaldua, New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1983.

20 नवंबर 2010

दीने-आदमीयत

ये मुसलमाँ है, वो हिन्दु, ये मसीही, वो यहूद
इस पे ये पाबन्दिया है, और उस पर ये क़यूद

शैख़ो-पण्डित ने भी क्या अहमक़ बनाया है हमें
छोटे-छोटे तंग ख़ानों में बिठाया है हमें

क़स्त्रे-इंसानी पे ज़ुल्मों-जहल बरसाती हुई
झंडियाँ कितनी नज़र आती हैं लहराती हुई

कोई इस जुल्मत में सूरत ही नहीं है नूर की
मुहर दिल पे लगी है इक-न-इक दस्तूर की

घटते-घटते मेह्ने-आलमताब से तारा हुआ
आदमी है मज़हबो-तहज़ीब का मारा हुआ

कुछ तमद्दुन के ख़लफ़ कुछ दीन के फ़र्ज़न्द हैं
कुलज़मों के रहने वाले बुलबुलों में बन्द हैं

क़ाबिले-इबरत है ये महदूदियत इंसान की
चिट्ठियाँ चिपकी हुई हैं, मुख़्तलिफ़ अदयान की

फिर रहा है आदमी भूला हुआ भटका हुआ
इक-न-इक लेबिल हर इक माथे पे है लटका हुआ

आख़िर इंसाँ तंग साँचों मे ढला जाता है क्यों
आदमी कहते हुए अपने को शर्माता है क्यों

क्या करे हिन्दोस्ताँ, अल्लाह की है ये भी देन
चाय हिन्दू, दूध मुस्लिम, नारियल सिख, बेर जैन

अपने हमजिंसों के कीने से भला क्या फ़ायदा
टुकड़े-टुकड़े होके जीने से भला क्या फ़ायदा

- जोश मलीहाबादी


क़यूद – बन्धन
क़स्त्रे-इंसानी – मानवता के महलों पर
तमद्दुन – संस्कृति
ख़लफ़ – संतान
फ़र्ज़न्द – पुत्र
कुलज़मों – समुद्र
क़ाबिले-इबरत – सीख योग्य
महदूदियत – संकीर्णता
मुख़्तलिफ़ – भिन्न-भिन्न्
अदयान – मज़हबों की
हमजिंसों – साथी मनुष्यों
कीने – द्वेष

13 नवंबर 2010

Moment of Silence

Before I start this poem,
I’d like to ask you to join me in
a moment of silence
in honour of those who died
in the World Trade Centre
and the Pentagon
last September 11th.

I would also like to ask you
a moment of silence
for all of those who have been
harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured, raped, or killed
in retaliation for those strikes,
for the victims in both
Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing …
A full day of silence
for the tens of thousands of Palestinians
who have died at the hands of
U.S.-backed Israeli forces
over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence
for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation
as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo
against the country.

Before I begin this poem:
two months of silence
for the Blacks under Apartheid
in South Africa,
where homeland security
made them aliens
in their own country.

Nine months of silence
for the dead in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, where death rained
down and peeled back
every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin
and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence
for the millions of dead
in Vietnam — a people, not a war –
for those who know a thing or two
about the scent of burning fuel,
their relatives’ bones buried in it,
their babies born of it.

A year of silence
for the dead in Cambodia and Laos,
victims of a secret war … ssssshhhhh ….
Say nothing … we don’t want them to
learn that they are dead.

Two months of silence
for the decades of dead
in Colombia, whose names,
like the corpses they once represented,
have piled up and slipped off
our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,
An hour of silence
for El Salvador …
An afternoon of silence
for Nicaragua …
Two days of silence
for the Guetmaltecos …
None of whom ever knew
a moment of peace
45 seconds of silence
for the 45 dead
at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence
for the hundred million Africans
who found their graves
far deeper in the ocean
than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing
or dental records
to identify their remains.
And for those who were
strung and swung
from the heights of
sycamore trees
in the south, the north,
the east, and the west …

100 years of silence …
For the hundreds of millions of
indigenous peoples
from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots
like Pine Ridge,
Wounded Knee,
Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers,
or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced
to innocuous magnetic poetry
on the refrigerator
of our consciousness …
So you want a moment of silence?

And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been

Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about
what causes poems like this
to be written

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th poem
for Chile, 1971
This is a September 12th poem
for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977
This is a September 13th poem
for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem
for Somalia, 1992.

This is a poem
for every date that falls
to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories
that were never told
The 110 stories that history
chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC,
The New York Times,
and Newsweek ignored
This is a poem
for interrupting this program.
And still you want
a moment of silence
for your dead?
We could give you
lifetimes of empty:

The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces
of nameless children
Before I start this poem
We could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit

If you want a moment of silence,
put a brick through
the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses,
the jailhouses, the Penthouses
and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt
fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered

You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.

Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the
second hand
In the space
between bodies in embrace,

Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all
Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin
at the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
For our dead.

---Emmanuel Ortiz

10 नवंबर 2010

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.

Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.

Drunk on music,
who needs wine?
Come on,
Sweetheart,
let’s go dancing
while we’ve
still got feet.

by David Budbill
from While We've Still Got Feet
Copper Canyon Press, 2005

6 नवंबर 2010

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)

25 अक्टूबर 2010

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