your dirhams and dinars from the marketplace of lust!
You bring such snares every time—
but why should we sell to you our peacock words,
the ruddy shelduck of our blood?
Our dreams may be inconsequential,
unfulfilled,
but they are dreams of the heart-stricken,
not the dreams of Zuleikha, Potiphar’s wife,
that cast aspersions on the Josephs of their desire,
nor the dreams of the worthies of Egypt
whose interpretation prison inmates must provide,
nor are they the dreams of tyrants
who bring God’s unprotected creatures to the gallows,
nor the dreams of plunderers
who put to sword the dreams of others.
Our dreams are dreams of the pure of heart,
dreams of change and good fortune—
dreams of forsaken doors,
dreams of besieged voices.
And why should we trade this rare wealth?
Why should we sell our dreams?
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
ZAFAR IQBAL
Ghazal: The Flower that Bloomed Beneath the Ground Is in My Heart
The flower that bloomed beneath the ground is in my heart
Ever since he retreated behind the veil, he lives within my heart
He that these fools have just expelled from the city
That flame, the color of lips, is here within my heart
Life’s path is lit a little by the blisters on my bare feet
And a small light from faith’s candle burns within my heart
The hundred moons of Solomon are nothing to me
The precious jewel of Bilquis’s lips lies within my heart
The world will long for these trembling rays of light
Until the time this luminous moon shines within my heart
Where is it to be found, the spell of this complex face?
Though a hundred beautiful pictures exist within my heart
Specters of some dream flit before my eyes
Some misty memory somewhere I have within my heart
I am not attached only to the flagstone at time’s door
A waxen image also lives within my heart
I go around showing this ace to the inept,
which splendor is it, otherwise, that is not within my heart?
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
Ghazal: Time Will Tell You One Day What I Am
Time will tell you one day what I am
Fire, ashes, the sun, or a mere particle
My heart’s wound may not match your flowering garden
But I too carry around a little treasure with me
You are imprinted on the walls of my soul
Don’t hide your face from me—I am your veil
Preserving in my eyes the image of some difficult valley
I burn, prostrate, in the desert of incapacity
All day long a sheet is stretched across feeling
When evening falls, I weep like dew
A wave comes and obliterates my image
I should drown, so long have I been at the water’s lip
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
Ghazal: Who Gave the Jhoomar of Pale Leaves to Dust’s Forehead?
Who gave the jhoomar of pale leaves to dust’s forehead?
From whose momentary self-revelation did dry wildernesses become green?
Small fairies remained huddled in their tiny enchanted palaces until the evening
Until the evening, flowers of snow continued to fall in the valley of Kaf
Perhaps once again this rain-soaked darkness will gleam
Perhaps once again the black princess of thick clouds will break into laughter
Again, like a lost soul, the breeze, on slow feet
has come to toss a pebble in the pool of memory
Sunflower of beauty’s skies, sister of my heart
where are you? My fingers are tired—come plant your lips on them
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
TAOS BANIHALI
Anthem
Our country is awake, awake our native land!
Tyranny will end, the tyrant will be driven from our home.
Our country is awake!
Long have we borne the oppressor,
to outsiders have paid tribute—
tyranny has laid waste our prospering homeland.
Our country is awake!
Once our authority stretched as far as Kabul—
that was one age, this is another.
Now the sickle has slashed cruelty and injustice at the root.
Our country is awake!
The moon of art and culture we once set
with diamonds and precious stones,
kept thriving the arts, crafts, and industry—
our homeland, a bejeweled masterwork.
When autumn’s breeze turned pale the delicate flowers,
when we awoke to our country’s condition,
the land blossomed with revolution’s fire.
Our country is awake!
Translated from Kashmiri by Saleem Kamili
Kashmir Is a Lion
We remember the massacre at Karbala,
horrors and atrocities do not frighten us—
we are ever ready to offer up our lives for honor and justice,
we have faith that we will uproot evil and oppression.
We respect and revere knowledge,
we have no use for rogues and scoundrels.
The outsiders ruling Kashmir gather up the pharons of its open fields.
We smote our own necks.
To sleep is in the nature of those who feed upon the dandelion
(“Sleep is the sister of death,” the wise have said),
but Kashmir is a sleeping lion.
Even in sleep, the lion keeps an eye open.
Translated from Kashmiri by Saleem Kamili
Our Heritage
Taos! It is impossible to forget those days—
how can one not recall the year ’48?
I feel the calendar has reversed itself,
and the year has become ’84.
I remember it like the meal I ate last night, or like my mother’s milk.
When the UN commission arrived in Kashmir,
in high schools and colleges everywhere
young men proclaimed:
“Freedom is our birthright!
We will run the Indian army out all on our own!
Tyrants, when will you hear our cry?”
But those assassins sent heartless jackals.
College students, as tender as budding flowers,
were beaten senseless by those cutthroats,
pummeled by the butts of guns and rifles.
Half dead already under the tyrant’s blows
many passed out, cruelly wounded—
but their hearts swelled with undiminished zeal.
The murderers snatched at and tore our blood-stained garments,
packed us into trucks, as if we were four-legged animals,
and took us with our sorrows to the prison.
They started scheming to silence us,
but we cried only, “We are free!”
Those who recovered consciousness shouted, “Zindabad!”
That scene is still before my eyes.
I lay naked, helpless with injuries,
until, a long while later, I was revived by an angel.
I heard a familiar voice—
that of my friend, who was also injured.
Wiping away the blood, Hajni Sahib said,
“My son, Umlala! Oh, Shameema!
Don’t lose heart! This is all just bismillah.
Tyranny and repression won’t last forever—
remember all that our prophet endured!”
Translated from
Kashmiri by Saleem Kamili
AFTAB IQBAL SHAMIM
Half Poem
I keep practicing my obsession.
Who knows when that manly moment may arrive
that will tear open the shirtfront of this ordinary, civilized poem
and disclose words of naked-eyed truth?
Tears, breaking on the shore of vacant eyes,
water the soil of darkness.
Any remedy? The race of mediocrities—
sever me from the legacy of its ages!
The heart says,
Come, on the highest peak of danger
let’s dance that life-disrobing dance the sight of which drives the whole world mad,
stirs up eyes that have slept for centuries within the blood
and, in the interval of a spark, this half poem completes itself.
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
Romance of Imagination
No! Keep to yourself your teardrop
that contains the perspective of eternity—
filtered through it, all distances
all light, the whole air, are cleansed.
The painter of light has painted a scene
of cross and gallows and dry watercourse.
Zapata, Che Guevara, and Mao
are not defeated in defeat—
those who assaulted the windmills
will forever keep returning.
What can be done? When this old water bag is repaired
it still drips from the stitches.
The fault lies with the needle-worker—
or is it with the thread spun from sunlight on the spinning wheel?
It is said that the blind singer has received an intimation
of excellence, but
with the striking bow he must
first break a hundred thousand sarangi strings.
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
The Waterwheel Turns
Where the sun goes down every day,
in some land, in that region,
when philosophies arrived as migrants, first the teacher’s wisdom
disclosed itself.
The foundation of the potential-for-growth culture was laid
centered on interest and world trade.
The standard-bearers of this singular vision acquired an empire
on which the sun never set.
In the cloth of its logic were wrapped
inquiry, analysis, and discovery.
Following the prince of wisdom, it
drew lines of color, race, language,
and geography, in the service of necessity,
and parceled out these little pieces,
occupied the passage and extremity of every sea.
My good man! What do you think,
History is some slut?
A coach hitched by the sultan’s door?
Or the declensions of grammar?
And are these teeming millions bullocks bound
in the yoke of the world?
What should I say! I am not
some rebel from the past century.
How should I go about interpreting life
from the perspective of sex and economics, ego or élan vital?
I am an ascetic possessed
who must, in the river that has wept itself dry,
let fall another teardrop.
One day, in the villages and towns that God has settled,
everything must turn upside down.
Have you not seen?
Yesterday, there, the great day of audacity
trounced the self-evident nature of God Almighty’s plans and powers.
Events are happening—
the world’s destiny is about to be rewritten.
Perhaps it is nearing time for the banquet of joy,
the term of despair is about to be reduced.
Look at the season of love’s unveiling—
just look at the word of revelation written on the prophetic tablet of tomorrow.
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
TANVEER ABBASI
Ghazal: The Luster of a Pearl Is Something Else
The luster of a pearl is something else
The sparkle of eyes, something else
The depth of the sea is a reality
The heart of a poet, something else
The cooing of a dove is music
The roar of cannons, something else
Clouds change color at twilight
The nuclear cloud is something else
What is in the heart is on the lips as well
The poet’s demeanor is something else
The body is a cage for the soul
A cage for the cage, something else
Look at the bloodstains and weep
Whose blood this is, something else
Pure gold shines bright
A smiling face is something else
Gold is good, and so is silver
The heart is something else
Hope is support enough, Tanveer
The fear of pain, something else
Translated from the Sindhi by Asif Farrukhi and Shah Mohammed Pirzada
Ghazal: Nobody Knows to Whom We Belong
Nobody knows to whom we belong—
everybody is somebody’s very own
What is the world? Nothing much to think about!
We continue nonetheless to give out love
Where Adam and Eve were,
we, too, are standing there
We are like leaves and buds—
we decay and sprout again
The world keeps looking
and we keep moving on
Translated from the Sindhi by Asif Farrukhi and Shah Mohammed Pirzada
Writing a Poem
Writing a poem
is like catching butterflies
or plucking a rose
or caressing the face
of a beautiful girl
as if I am holding
lightning in my hands
or in my clenched fists
imprisoning
the whirlwind
Translated from the Sindhi by Asif Farrukhi and Shah Mohammed Pirzada
ZEHRA NIGAH
Compromise
Silky and snug chador of compromise
I have woven this chador over many years
No flowers or shrubs of truth anywhere
Not a single stitch of any falsehood
Even with this I will cover my body
With this you, too, will be content
You will be neither happy nor melancholy
Stretched above us, it will make a home
If we spread it out, the courtyard will bloom
If we raise it, a curtain will fall
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
Evening’s First Star
When a strong gust of wind,
struck by some thought, passed by,
when the face of the burning sun
was wrapped in an azure scarf,
when the breast of dry land
stirred with the dew of breath,
that evening we were all together.
He who laughed and looked at us,
he was our first friend—
the evening star,
who had, perhaps, for the two of us
appeared a little early.
When that resplendent room
was hazy with cigarette smoke,
when the wormwood of liquor
had sweetened everyone’s speech,
every anxiety had its own destination,
every reverie its own course,
that night we were all together.
What a stir there was!
I, engrossed in civilities,
you, delighting in revelry.
The subject on which
we spoke and reflected
was the changing world.
Some talk there was of weather and climat
e.
When the smoke in the room
got in everybody’s eyes,
I opened up the window,
you pulled back the curtain.
He that looked at us with sorrow
was again that first friend of ours—
the evening star,
who, perhaps, for the two of us
that night was up till the crack of dawn.
Evening’s first star.
Translated from Urdu by Waqas Khwaja
ATA SHAD
Lament of the Merchants of Hope
This is what the heart says,
I am neither morning nor evening,
I am neither true dawn nor twilight.
What rainbow, what clouds, what morning breeze?
What planet Earth?
How long must a fakir beg for alms!
The heart feels and understands,
desire is like a tired traveler
without destination.
We have heard that night will come.
They say that a certain day will dawn.
Who knows the night, and who the day?
Both are dead.
Clouds of joy and sorrow range above me,
love’s autumn is springtime to me.
I tie the knot of hope—He leads me to despair.
The rituals of enmity and friendship last but forty days.
In the mirror of sleep, the whole world has become a marketplace,
and in this marketplace
joys begin to go soft and stale from the very start.
The fertile valley sparkles like pearls—
eyes are blind to it, the ears turn deaf.
It reveals itself in a flash of lightning and glows like burnished gold.