And If...

And if the branches tap my pane
And the poplars whisper nightly,
It is to make me dream again
I hold you to me tightly.

And if the stars shine on the pond
And light its sombre shoal,
It is to quench my mind's despond
And flood with peace my soul.

And if the clouds their tresses part
And does the moon outblaze,
It is but to remind my heart
I long for you always.

-Written by Mihai Eminescu. (Translated by Corneliu M. Popescu)

Imparat si poletar (Emperor and Proletarian)

Squatting on wooden benches, within a tavern bare,
Where daylight's rays but dimly through dirty windows show,
Before a long, stained table, their faces drawn with care,
Wearied out by wandering and doubting's black despair,
These are the wretched sons of poverty and woe.

"Ah friends," said one, "you think man is a light that glows
Upon this earth of sorrowing and misery?
Why, not a spark is there in him that candid shows;
His lamp is dark as is this globe on which he grows,
And over which the lord omnipotent is he.

Tell me then what justice means... The powerful secure
Behind their wealth, within their circling laws conspire
To mass still greater wealth against the needy poor,
Against ourselves, that we shall all the toil endure
Bowed down and bent in labour's yoke our lives entire.

Some pass their time in ceaseless revelry and play;
The hours smile for them, and amber wine they drink;
The winter months in gardens do they wile away,
Coolness of alpine snows the summer fires allay;
They turn the morn to eve, and from the sun's eye shrink.

Virtue for them does not exist, but they will preach
Sacrificing, love and diligence to us.
The heavy car of state must rumble on, and each
Of you must pour his blood into the battle's breach,
That of your endless pain they may grow prosperous.

Countless, mighty hosts, and navies on the sea,
Splendid golden crowns on noble foreheads worn,
Riches from near and far, in thoughtless quantity,
These hold the rich aloft in high sublimely;
While on our aching backs are all the burdens born.

Religion-but a tale, astutely spread abroad
To rivet on your shoulders the heavy harnessed load,
For, had you lost all hope of heavenly reward
After a life on earth with pain and hardship scored,
Would you go on working as an ox beneath the goad?

With what strange phantom shadows are your illusions fed
That make you set your faith in heaven's promised store?
No, when your life is passed, all hope of joy is sped,
And he who dies in misery, in misery is dead;
For those who pass the grave come back again no more.

In lies and windy phrases their state and safety stands,
Their holy law and order is but an empty creed,
To keep their stolen wealth safe from your needy hands,
They arm you to destroy your like on foreign lands,
And you against yourselves triumphantly they lead.

Why should you be slaves of their immoral gold,
You who scarcely live for all your endless toil?
Why should disease and death you in their arms enfold,
While they in plenitude and boundless wealth grow old
Even as though they hoped to cheat death of its spoil?

How do you forget the power that numbers mean?
You could take back today your rights they will not give.
Build no more these walls with which their wealth they screen,
Or which for prisons serve when pressed by torments keen
You dare assert at last the right you have to live.

Every pleasure they enjoy surrounded by their law
And all their careless days in utmost sweetness spend,
In luxury and vice, and drunken wild uproar.
They call your virgins in, blind instruments before
Their old corrupted satyrs who their young beauty rend.

And should you ask yourselves what part is left for you
The drudgery on which is based their happiness,
A lifelong servitude, and crumbs of bread a few.
Robbed of your daughters, and dishonoured too . .
For them the earth and sky, for you naught but distress.

They have no need of rules: virtue is easy when
All that you want you have. Round you their laws are wound,
Their punishments designed to strike you, wretched men
Who date to stretch a hand to ask your own again:
Even your needs become a crime that has no bound.

Hurl to the earth their scheme founded on greed and wrong.
This system that divides, making us rich and poor !
Since there will be no prize in death awaited long,
Demand the rights today that do to you belong,
And let us live in equal brotherhood secure !

Smash down the antique bronze that Venus naked shows;
Let pictures that do wickedly entice be brought to dust,
Snowy limbs that tell of wonders no man knows,
And break in passions rude our maidens soft repose,
And lead them unawares into the claws of lust !

Scatter wide what rouses and sustains perverted mind,
Temple and palace storm that shield disgrace and crime,
Melt the statues tall that of tyranny remind;
Wash from the marble steps the footprints left behind
By those who near the great through lies and pandering climb !

Banish the signs of pomp and false deceiving pride;
O, strip from daily life the granite robe it wears,
Its purple and its gold... its foul and ugly hide;
To make of life a dream, of living purified,
That without passion is and happiness prepares.

Gigantic pyramids from this life's ruins raise,
A memento mori unto the end of time;
To open out our souls that we may justice praise
Unto eternity, not nude and shameful ways,
With harlot soul, and eyes grown wild with lust and crime

Oh, let the deluge loose; you've waited long to know
What recompense your meek humility will get;
The wolf and the hyena do in the courtiers grow,
Their cruelties of old still baser patterns show,
Only the form is changed, the evil lives on yet.

Strike and the golden era will return to us again,
Of which old legends tell us that all was gay and fair;
That happiness in life be equal for all men.
Even the touch of death will not be awful then,
But seem a smiling angel with long and golden hair.

Then you will die contented and not by sorrow wrung,
Your children will be born and in full gladness live.
Even the church will not bewail with iron tongue
The passing of the free to live the blest among:
None will lament the dead who took all life could give.

Thus slowly will grow less the toll of dire disease,
While that alone will flourish which nature did intend,
And all these things will come in gradual degrees,
Till man but leaves the earth when earth no more can please.
The brimming cup of life drained empty to the end."
.............................................................................

Along the banks of Seine, drawn in a gala coach
The great king slowly goes, pallid and deep in thought.
Neither the lapping waves, nor rumbling wheels encroach
Upon his brooding mind; before his train's approach
There stands the suffering crowd with suffering distraught.

With ready piercing glance, and subtle smiling air,
He reads the secret thought that fills the people's soul,
The hand that holds the fate of those poor creatures there
Salutes them now with bland, acutely reasoned care
Because his fate and theirs is but one single whole.

Loveless he is, and lone, going so grandly by;
Convinced like all of you that malice, vice and hate
Will always govern all things and under all things lie,
While ever human history its age-old course will ply
As on time's heavy anvil blind hammers heedless fate.

So he whose very person is tyranny's high crest
Nods a gentle greeting to these ragged human things.
If they who are the power on which his glories rest
Would one day raise their heads or challenge his behest,
Low, yes low indeed, would fall the king of kings.

For all your shrewd mistrust, your deeply doubting sense,
Your cold and bitter smile that ne'er to pity woke,
For all your strong belief that law is but pretence,
For all your numbers might, the shade of violence,
'Tis he who holds you dumbly, still toiling in the yoke.
.............................................................................

Paris is drowned in fire; the tempest bathes in flame,
Steeples like black torches blaze in the wind away.
Amidst the billowing sea whose waves no power could tame,
Cries and the clash of arms high battle do acclaim.
In very truth in France an age has died today.

Down streets where flaming houses glitter on pikes and sword
Barricades arise from blocks of granite piled;
An army marching forwards, the proletarian horde,
Company on company, that soon the ramparts board
Midst thunderous echoing clang of the alarm bells wild.

With faces pale as marble, as marble too as cold,
Women carrying muskets pass through the ruddy glow.
Their hair hangs o'er their shoulders and does their breasts enfold;
Mad with lifelong suffering and with dark hatred bold,
Black their eyes, yet gleaming with the brightness of despair.

Courage little soldiers wrapped in your tresses long,
Great today has grown the poor abandoned child,
Through the fire and ashes to justice march along,
For all your deeds of horror do to this hour belong;
Not you to blame, but those who your young souls defiled !
.............................................................................

And now the ocean shines, as though were on it laid
And slid upon themselves broad plates of crystal bright;
While low above the trees, the secret forest glade,
The lonely yellow moon on azure field displayed
O'er floods the silent world with her triumphal light.

Across the silver swell, with motion smooth and slow
Ocean battered ships draw their old wooden sides;
Like mighty gliding shadows across the sea they go
While through their straining canvass the moonbeams seem to throw
A fiery golden wheel that e'er before them rides.

Upon a cliff corroded by the billows' restless chide,
Beneath a weeping willow, with branches to the ground,
The king of kings is gazing out o'er the falling tide
Where gleaming silver circles midst one another glide,
And where the night breeze wanders with slow and cadenced sound.

And to the king it seemed that through the starlight fair,
Treading the forest trees, and crossing the ocean clear,
With long and snowy beard, and heavy thoughtful air,
A crown of withered grasses caught to his tangled hair
There came the mad King Lear.

With mute astonishment he watched that shadow hang
Against the riven clouds, through which the stars unfurled
Blazed out; and in his head a train of visions sprang..
Till loudly echoing above it all there rang
The people's voices that clothed in fire the stricken world:

"In every man the earth is entirely built once more.
Old Demiurges still strives within each heart in vain,
For every mind puts in questions that all have put before:
Why is the flower that blooms to death inheritor?
Longings strange and sad, that rise in obscure pain.

The seed of a whole world of greatness and desire
At hazard have been sown within the hearts of all;
And when their time is come, their nature does aspire
After a perfect fruit, with all its strength entire;
Yet ere the fruit be ripe, the blossoms often fall.

Thus is the human fruit oft frozen in the bloom;
One man becomes a king, another but a slave,
Covering with chaos their different lots too soon,
Before the morning sun their works like petals strewn;
Yet nature to them all an equal knowledge gave.

Throughout the length of time, different and still the same
Their yearnings and their hopes are of one kind composed,
And though of countless fashions does seem life's secret flame,
All are alike deceived that call upon her name;
While infinite desire is in an atom closed.

When you but recollect that death will end this dream,
That nothing much is changed the day your life is passed,
This struggling desire to right the world will seem
Folly, and you'll grow tired; but one thing true you'll deem:
That life is but the way to endless death at last.

--- Mihai Eminescu. English version by Corneliu M. Popescu

शीशों का मसीहा कोई नहीं (Sheeshon Ka Maseeha Koi Nahin)

मोती हो कि शीशा, जाम कि दुर1
जो टूट गया सो टूट गया
कब अश्कों से जुड़ सकता है
जो टूट गया, सो छूट गया

तुम नाहक टुकड़े चुन चुन कर
दामन में छुपाए बैठे हो
शीशों का मसीहा कोई नहीं
क्या आस लगाए बैठे हो

शायद कि इन्हीं टुकड़ों में कहीं
वो साग़रे-दिल2 है जिसमें कभी
सद नाज़3 से उतरा करती थी
सहबाए-गमें-जानां की परी

फिर दुनिया वालों ने तुम से
ये सागर लेकर फोड़ दिया
जो मय थी बहा दी मिट्टी में
मेहमान का शहपर4 तोड़ दिया

ये रंगी रेजे5 हैं शाहिद6
उन शोख बिल्लूरी7 सपनों के
तुम मस्त जवानी में जिन से
खल्वत8 को सजाया करते थे

नादारी 9, दफ्तर, भूख और गम
इन सपनों से टकराते रहे
बेरहम था चौमुख पथराओ
ये कांच के ढ़ांचे क्या करते

या शायद इन जर्रों में कहीं
मोती है तुम्हारी इज्जत का
वो जिस से तुम्हारे इज्ज़10 पे भी
शमशादक़दों11 ने नाज़ किया

उस माल की धुन में फिरते थे
ताजिर भी बहुत रहजन भी बहुत
है चोर‍नगर, यां मुफलिस की
गर जान बची तो आन गई

ये सागर शीशे, लालो- गुहर
सालम हो तो कीमत पाते हैं
यूँ टुकड़े टुकड़े हों तो फकत12
चुभते हैं, लहू रुलवाते हैं

तुम नाहक टुकड़े चुन चुन कर
दामन में छुपाए बैठे हो
शीशों का मसीहा कोई नहीं
क्या आस लगाए बैठे हो

यादों के गरेबानों के रफ़ू
पर दिल की गुज़र कब होती है
इक बखिया उधेड़ा, एक सिया
यूँ उम्र बसर कब होती है

इस कारगहे-हस्ती13 में जहाँ
ये सागर शीशे ढ़लते हैं
हर शै का बदल मिल सकता है
सब दामन पुर हो सकते हैं

जो हाथ बढ़े यावर14 है यहाँ
जो आंख उठे वो बख़्तावर15
यां धन दौलत का अंत नहीं
हों घात में डाकू लाख यहाँ

कब लूट झपट में हस्ती16 की
दुकानें खाली होती हैं
यां परबत परबत हीरे हैं
या सागर सागर मोती है

कुछ लोग हैं जो इस दौलत पर
पर्दे लटकाया फिरते हैं
हर परबत को हर सागर को
नीलाम चढ़ाते फिरते हैं

कुछ वो भी हैं जो लड़ भिड़ कर
ये पर्दे नोच गिराते हैं
हस्ती के उठाईगीरों की
हर चाल उलझाए जाते हैं

इन दोनों में रन१७ पड़ता है
नित बस्ती बस्ती नगर नगर
हर बसते घर के सीने में
हर चलती राह के माथे पर

ये कालक भरते फिरते हैं
वो जोत जगाते रहते हैं
ये आग लगाते फिरते हैं
वो आग बुझाते रहते हैं

सब सागर शीशे, लालो-‍गुहर
इस बाज़ी में बिद जाते हैं
उठो, सब ख़ाली हाथों को
इस रन से बुलावे आते हैं.

1. एक तरह का माणिक
2. हृदय रूपी मदिरा पात्र, 3.गर्व से
4. सबसे मज़बूत पंख
5. टुकड़े, 6. साक्षी, 7. काँच, 8. एकाकीपन
9. दरिद्रता
10. विनम्रता 11. सरों के पेड़ ऍसे कद वालों ने
12. सिर्फ
13. संसार
14. सहायक, 15. भाग्यवान
16. जीवन
१७. संघर्ष

---

जो बीत गई सो बात गई ( Jo Beet Gayi So Baat Gayi)

जीवन में एक सितारा था
माना वह बेहद प्यारा था
वह डूब गया तो डूब गया
अंबर के आंगन को देखो
कितने इसके तारे टूटे
कितने इसके प्यारे छूटे
जो छूट गए फ़िर कहाँ मिले
पर बोलो टूटे तारों पर
कब अंबर शोक मनाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जीवन में वह था एक कुसुम
थे उस पर नित्य निछावर तुम
वह सूख गया तो सूख गया
मधुबन की छाती को देखो
सूखी कितनी इसकी कलियाँ
मुरझाईं कितनी वल्लरियाँ
जो मुरझाईं फ़िर कहाँ खिलीं
पर बोलो सूखे फूलों पर
कब मधुबन शोर मचाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

जीवन में मधु का प्याला था
तुमने तन मन दे डाला था
वह टूट गया तो टूट गया
मदिरालय का आंगन देखो
कितने प्याले हिल जाते हैं
गिर मिट्टी में मिल जाते हैं
जो गिरते हैं कब उठते हैं
पर बोलो टूटे प्यालों पर
कब मदिरालय पछताता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई

मृदु मिट्टी के बने हुए हैं
मधु घट फूटा ही करते हैं
लघु जीवन ले कर आए हैं
प्याले टूटा ही करते हैं
फ़िर भी मदिरालय के अन्दर
मधु के घट हैं,मधु प्याले हैं
जो मादकता के मारे हैं
वे मधु लूटा ही करते हैं
वह कच्चा पीने वाला है
जिसकी ममता घट प्यालों पर
जो सच्चे मधु से जला हुआ
कब रोता है चिल्लाता है
जो बीत गई सो बात गई.

---

आरज़ू

जाने किसकी तलाश उनकी आँखों मे थी,
आरज़ू के मुसाफिर भटकते रहे,
जितने भी वो चले उतने ही बिछ गए राह में फासले,
ख्वाब मंजिलें थे और मंजिलें ख्वाब थी,
रास्तों से निकलते रहे रास्ते जाने किसके वास्ते,
आरज़ू के मुसाफिर भटकते रहे...

कोई पुरानी याद मेरा रास्ता रोककर मुझसे कहती है
इतनी जलती धुप में यूँ कब तक बैठोगे
आओ चल के बीते दिनों की छाव में बैठे
उस लम्हे की बात करे जिसमे कोई फूल खिला था
उस लम्हे की बात करे जिसमे किसी की आवाज की चांदी खनक उठी थी
उस लम्हे की बात करे जिसमे किसी की नजरो के मोती बरसे थे
कोई पुरानी याद मेरा रास्ता रोके...

सच तो यह है की कसूर अपना था,
चाँद को छूने की तमन्ना की,
आसमान को ज़मीन पर माँगा,
फूल, चाहा की पत्थरों में खिलें,
कांटो में की तलाश खुशबू की,
आरज़ू थी की आग ठंडक दे,
बर्फ में ढूंढते रहे गर्मी,
ख्वाब जो देखा चाहा सच हो जाये,
इसकी हमको सज़ा तो मिलनी ही थी,
सच तो यह है कसूर अपना ही था...

---जावेद अख़्तर

America, America

God save America,
My home, sweet home!

The French general who raised his tricolor over Nuqrat al-Salman
where I was a prisoner thirty years ago …
in the middle of that U-turn that split the back of the Iraqi army,
the general who loved Saint Emilion wines called Nuqrat al-Salman a fort …
Of the surface of the earth, generals know only two dimensions:
whatever rises is a fort,
whatever spreads is a battlefield.
How ignorant the general was!

But Liberation was better versed in topography.
The Iraqi boy who conquered her front page sat carbonized behind a steering wheel
on the Kuwait-Safwan highway while television cameras
(the booty of the defeated and their identity)
were safe in a truck like a storefront on Rivoli Street.
The neutron bomb is highly intelligent.
It distinguishes between an "I" and an "Identity."

God save America,
My home, sweet home!

Blues
How long must I walk to Sacramento?
How long must I walk to Sacramento?
How long will I walk to reach my home?
How long will I walk to reach my girl?
How long must I walk to Sacramento?
For two days, no boat has sailed this stream,
Two days, two days, two days.
Honey, how can I ride?
I know this stream,
But, O but, O but,
For two days, no boat has sailed this stream.
La Li La La Li La
La Li La La Li La
A stranger becomes afraid.
Have no fear, dear horse.
No fear of the wolves of the wild,
No fear, for the land is my land.
La Li La La Li La
La Li La La Li La
A stranger becomes afraid.

God save America,
My home, sweet home!

I too love jeans and jazz and Treasure Island
and John Silver's parrot and the balconies of New Orleans.
I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steam-boats and Abraham Lincoln's dogs.
I love the fields of wheat and corn and the smell of Virginia tobacco.
But I am not American.
Is that enough for the Phantom pilot to turn me back to the Stone Age?
I need neither oil nor America herself,
neither the elephant nor the donkey.
Leave me, pilot, leave my house roofed with palm fronds and this wooden bridge.
I need neither your Golden Gate nor your skyscrapers.
I need the village, not New York.
Why did you come to me from your Nevada desert, soldier armed to the teeth?
Why did you come all the way to distant Basra, where fish used to swim by our doorsteps?
Pigs do not forage here.
I only have these water buffaloes lazily chewing on water lilies.
Leave me alone, soldier.
Leave me my floating cane hut and my fishing spear.
Leave me my migrating birds and the green plumes.
Take your roaring iron birds and your Toma-hawk missiles.
I am not your foe.
I am the one who wades up to the knees in rice paddies.
Leave me to my curse.
I do not need your day of doom.

God save America,
My home, sweet home!

America:
let's exchange gifts.
Take your smuggled cigarettes
and give us potatoes.
Take James Bond's golden pistol
and give us Marilyn Monroe's giggle.
Take the heroin syringe under the tree
and give us vaccines.
Take your blueprints for model penitentiaries
and give us village homes.
Take the books of your missionaries
and give us paper for poems to defame you.
Take what you do not have
and give us what we have.
Take the stripes of your flag
and give us the stars.
Take the Afghani mujahideen beard
and give us Walt Whitman's beard filled with butterflies.
Take Saddam Hussein
and give us Abraham Lincoln or give us no one.

Now as I look across the balcony,
across the summer sky, the summery summer,
Damascus spins, dizzied among television aerials,
then it sinks, deeply,
in the stones of the forts, in towers, in the arabesques of ivory,
and sinks, deeply, far from Rukn el-Din
and disappears far from the balcony.

And now
I remember trees:
the date palm of our mosque in Basra,
at the end of Basra
a bird's beak, a child's secret, a summer feast.
I remember the date palm.
I touch it. I become it, when it falls black without fronds,
when a dam fell, hewn by lightning.
And I remember the mighty mulberry
when it rumbled, butchered with an axe …
to fill the stream with leaves
and birds
and angels
and green blood.
I remember when pomegranate blossoms covered the sidewalks.
The students were leading the workers parade …

The trees die pummeled.
Dizzied, not standing, the trees die.

God save America,
My home, sweet home!

We are not hostages, America,
and your soldiers are not God's soldiers …
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the
drowned gods,
the gods of bulls,
the gods of fires,
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and
blood in a song ‥

We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor,
who emerges out of farmers' ribs,
hungry
and bright,
and raises heads up high …
America, we are the dead.
Let your soldiers come.
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him.
We are the drowned ones, dear lady.
We are the drowned.
Let the water come.

--- Saadi Youssef

(translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)

Solitude

Seven hundred thousand women live single in Paris
Their age between thirty and forty
Unmarried, divorced, or
Mothers
The voice of the announcer was so neutral
Chewing this plain number from among the many details of modern life
Closing the news with it
Seven hundred thousand single women
O man!
And for four hours you have been tormenting yourself before a computer
In search of good sentences that express hard life without a woman.

---Abdel-ilah Salhi