Posts Tagged poet

Dr. Visho Sharma has been kind enough to send me this guest post that pays tribute to a legendary poet of the subcontinent who was committed to his principles and ideology throughout his life. RR

Jo bejaan khilonon se bahel jaati haiy

Tapti saanson ki haraarat se pighul jaati haiy
Paaon jis raah mein rakhti hai phisul jaati haiy
Bunkey seemaab hur ek zurf mein dhul jaati haiy
Zindagi jihad main hay sabar kay qabu main nahin.
Jannat ek aur hay jo murd kay pahloo main naheen.
Uski azaad ravish pur bhi machalna hay tujhey
Zeest key aahni saanchey main dhulna hai tujhey
Uth meri jaan mere saath hi chalna hai tujhey.”

These verses are from the Urdu poem “Aurat” (Woman) written by the famous Urdu poet from India , Kaifi Azmi. What is remarkable is that Kaifi wrote this poem in the 1940s before the independence of India . In that era when the Indian society was very traditional and very much a man’s world, such thoughts were almost unheard of. But then Kaifi was always decades ahead of his time. (more…)

A reader – Joe 31 – has rendered a great translation of Faiz’s poem – “Intesab”. I am posting it as a separate blog entry for all those who read and enjoy Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Pakistan’s eminent poet. This poem appears as an introduction to one of his early collections of verse. This timeless poem is relevant even today as it celebrates the resilience and courage of Pakistani proletariat.

Dedicated to these times, and the sorrow of these times.
The pain of today, that is set against the plentiful garden of life.
The forest of dead leaves, that is my land.
The collection of pain that is my land.

Dedicated to the gloomy lives of clerks
Moth eaten hearts and words.
Dedicated to the postmen
Dedicated to the coachmen
Dedicated to the railway workers
Dedicated to the innocent beings in the factories. (more…)

In response to my article on Lahore’s vanishing trees, a reader reminded me of one of my favourite poems in Urdu composed by the lesser known genius, Majeed Amjad. I am posting this poem though I am not sure if everyone will be able to read the Urdu script. I am taking a chance at translating the opening lines:

For twenty years, these trees stood at the doorstep of a singing canal

Gallant guards at the borders of swaying fields

Shady, enticing, blossoming chatnars

All were sold for a mere twenty thousand rupees

In the last stanza, after all the trees have been chopped, the poet cries

Now I stand by the singing canal and muse

In this murderous environment, only my thought sways

Adam’s descendants ought to chop me, why not? (more…)

I am filled with splendor,
spinning with your love.

It looks like I’m spinning around you,
but no – I’m spinning around myself!

Rumi’s Quatrain 1118

– Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992

Stop talking!
What a shame you have no familiarity
with inner silence!
Polish your heart for a day or two:
make that mirror your book of contemplation. (more…)

You call him a moon,
yet moonlight fades.
You call him a king,
yet kingdoms fall.

How often you say,
Wake up, you’ll miss the sunrise.
But His Sun always shines within me.
How can I miss the sunrise?

– Version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992

Courtesy mehr-i-niimroz, I found one of my favourite verses from Ghalib

taa((at me;N taa rahe nah mai-o-angabii;N kii laag
doza;x me;N ;Daal do ko))ii le kar bihisht ko

1) so that, in obedience/worship, the attachment/desire of wine and honey does not remain
2) take Paradise, and cast it into Hell

Commentary here

I am drunk and you are insane
tell me, who will lead us home?
How many times have I asked you not to drink so much
for I see no sober soul in town.
Come to the tavern my dearest and taste the wine of love
for the soul is joyous only in the company of lovers.
The tavern of love is your livelihood
your income and expenses, the wine.
Be careful, not to trust a sober soul
with even one drop of this wine.
Go on playing your lute, my drunken gypsy but tell me,
between the two of us, who is more drunk?
As I left my house a Sufi approached me,
in his glance I saw a hundred gardens.
He swayed from side to side like a ship without an anchor,
while a hundred reasonable men watched on enviously.
Where are you from? I asked him.
He replied, “Half from Turkistan and half from Farghaneh,
half from water and clay and half from soul and heart,
half from the edge of the sea and half from the depths of the coean.”

Rumi — Ghazal (Ode) 2398
Translated by Azima Melita Kolin
and Maryam Mafi
Rumi: Hidden Music
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2001

I need a mouth as wide as the sky
to say the nature of a True Person, language
as large as longing.

The fragile vial inside me often breaks.
No wonder I go mad and disappear for three days
every month with the moon. (more…)

The medicine of all intellects is just a picture of Love,
the faces of all sweethearts are but His veil.
You who are devoted to Love, turn your face toward your own face:
you have no kinsman but yourself, you who are distraught.
The faqir made a qiblah of his heart and began to pray:
The human being has nothing but that for which he labors.*
Before he heard any answer to his prayer
he had been praying many years.
He prayed intently without receiving any overt response,
but in secret from Divine grace he was hearing I am here.
Since that sickly man was always dancing without a tambourine,
in reliance upon the bounty of the Almighty Creator,
though neither a heavenly voice nor Divine messenger
was ever seen to be near,
yet the ear of his hope was filled with Here I am.
His hope was saying, without tongue, “Come!”
and that call was sweeping all weariness from within his heart. (more…)

whenever you meet
someone deep drunk
yet full of wisdom
be aware and watch
this person is enthralled
only by love (more…)

Published in The Friday Times

As Indian TV channels broadcast stories on Pakistan’s domestic infighting, and rumours of a new coup d’ etat, my less perturbed alter-ego is calmed by Agra – the run down city that was once the capital of the Mughal empire. I have spent three days with a delightful group of South Asian writers, poets and academics who have congregated to celebrate the SAARC writers’ festival organised by Ajeet Caur, the legendary Punjabi writer whose love for Lahore has not waned despite the iron curtain erected sixty one years ago. Caur has been managing the Foundation of South Asian Writers and Literature (FOSWAL) since 1992 and single-handedly she has challenged the many geographical and political barriers that have been erected. FOSWAL is now a platform for writers and poets on the margins of power-drama, lighting little lamps of hope. (picture above left : SAARC writers with Pakistani delegates Ustad Akhtar (middle), Parveen Atif (second from left) and Zahid Nawaz (extreme right)

The marvelous sound
That comes from the sky – I am That.
The sweet fragrance
That comes from the garden – I am That.

The great beauty
That comes from the heart and soul
Until I leave . . . Wait!
I can’t leave – I am That.

Rumi – version by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise
Bantam Books, 1992

I am republishing an old article that appeared in The Friday Times, Pakistan on the great Urdu poet Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi.

Ab aik baar to qudrat javaabdeh thehre

hazaar baar ham insaan aazmaaye gaye

Now Nature must be held accountable at least once

We humans have been held answerable a thousand times

Few men evoke such awe and respect as the departed poet and writer Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi who breathed his last on July 10 2006. His mastery over poetry – he has been equally prolific in traditional ghazal and nazm – and prose – as a short story writer, journalist and literary critic – stand at the pinnacle of Urdu literature and he has contributed to the language over 50 titles.

Born in 1916 amidst the scenic Soon-Sekasar valley in district Khushab, nature influenced the evolution of Qasmi’s poetic sensibilities. Exposure to the grim realities of rural India’s inequities also played their part in his development as a writer; the underlying theme of his poetry is human dignity and his short stories – regarded as next in line to another master, Munshi Prem Chand, for their directness and simplicity – portrayed the woes of the Punjabi peasantry and their interaction with power structures. Following his matriculation from Campbellpur in 1931, around the time when he wrote his first poem, he moved to the Sadiq Egerton College in Bahawalpur and graduated in 1935. (more…)