A Man Doesn't Have Time In His Life

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.

--- Yehuda Amichai (Note: From "The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai", translations by ChanaBloch and Stephen Mitchell)

A Worker Reads History

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Greek triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.
So many questions.

--- Bertolt Brecht

Bitter Cold

There is bitter cold 

At the borders of the city Of indifference. 

Wizened women and men 

And children below their teens 

Lie the frozen nights 

On bare tarmac, 

Surviving by the fire in their hearts, 

And the justice of their cause. 

A glow of truth from their being 

Warms the air and shames the 

Winter of crude impertinence, 

Even as their human bodies may 

Succumb to the December hell.

 Carrying the nursing warmth 

Of the soil in their bones, 

India’s farmers outface the urban 

Cold and show how the real freeze 

Lies in the swollen skull of authority 

Whose hollow cruelty may be stern 

Without human content, but whose 

Pride of office screams for pity. 

 This is truly a new beauty born 

That gathers histories 

Of courage and faith

 In the sounding of the people’s horn 

That may never be stilled 

Either by Nature’s extremes 

Or the flimsy robes worn By Pharaohs of the day. 

Yet again, the ploughshare shows the way. 

 ---Badri Raina

गीत है यह, गिला नही

 'आये भी वो गये भी वो' 'गीत है यह, गिला नहीं।'

हमने ये कब कहा भला, हमसे कोई मिला नहीं।

आपके एक ख़याल में मिलते रहे हम आपसे

ये भी है एक सिलसिला गो कोई सिलसिला नहीं।

गर्मे-सफर हैं आप, तो हम भी हैं भीड़ में कहीं।

अपना भी काफ़िला है कुछ आप ही का काफ़िला नहीं।

दर्द को पूछते थे वो, मेरी हँसी थमी नहीं,

दिल को टटोलते थे वो, मेरा जिगर हिला नहीं।

आयी बहार हुस्‍न का खाबे-गराँ लिये हुए,

मेरे चमन को क्‍या हुआ, जो कोई गुल खिला नहीं।

उसने किये बहत जतन, हार के कह उठी नज़र,

सीना-ए-चाक का रफू हमसे कभी सिला नहीं।

इश्‍क़ का शायर है ख़ाक, हुस्‍न का जिक्र है मज़ाक़

दर्द में गर चमक नहीं, रूह में गर जिला नहीं।

कौन उठाये उसके नाज, दिल तो उसी के पास है;

'शम्‍स' मजे में हैं कि हम इश्‍क में मुब्तिला नहीं।

---  शमशेर बहादुर सिंह

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

---John McCrae

In Praise of Coldness

"If you wish to move your reader,"
Chekhov said, "you must write more coldly."

Herakleitos recommended, "A dry soul is best."

And so at the center of many great works
is found a preserving dispassion,
like the vanishing point of quattrocentro perspective,
or tiny packets of desiccant enclosed
in a box of new shoes or seeds.

But still the vanishing point
is not the painting,
the silica is not the blossoming plant.

Chekhov, dying, read the timetables of trains.
To what more earthly thing could he have been faithful?—
Scent of rocking distances,
smoke of blue trees out the window,
hampers of bread, pickled cabbage, boiled meat.

Scent of a knowable journey.

Neither a person entirely broken
nor one entirely whole can speak.

In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.

--- Jane Hirschfield

No Road Back Home

In this forgotten place I have no lover’s touch
Each night brings darker dreams, I have no amulet
My life is all I ask, I have no other thirst
These silent thoughts torment, I have no way to hope

Who I once was, what I’ve become, I cannot know
Who could I tell my heart’s desires, I cannot say
My love, the temper of the fates I cannot guess
I long to go to you, I have no strength to move

Through cracks and crevices I’ve watched the seasons change
For news of you I’ve looked in vain to buds and flowers
To the marrow of my bones I’ve ached to be with you
What road led here, why do I have no road back home

---Abduqadir Jalalidin (a detained Uighur poet, bears witness to the suffering of Uighurs detained in Chinese so-called “reeducation” camps)