Monday 8 November 2021

Gone are the days by Mirza Ghalib

Gone are the days when I would

 smell your fragrance

And remember your face at the sight

of a flower

                                                           

Gone are the days when I would sing

of Qais’s grandeur

And praise the gorgeous nature

of Farhad

 

Gone are the days when admiring

your stature

I would contend with the cypress

and the rose

 

Gone are the days when I would free

Some birds

Upon hearing the arrival

of a message from you

 

Don’t trap me in your tresses now,

gone are the days

When I would be happy to snare

myself in such travails!

 

I’m caught up with a different order

of Justice now

Gone are the days when I would

complaint my woes to you

 

The desire of going to Ka’ba

maddens me Ghalib

Gone are the days when I would

long for Khalq and Nowshad!

 

© translated from Persian by Ashaq Hussain Parray

 

Sunday 5 July 2020

Birth of a Poem


A poem can begin anywhere─
From a pair of shoes
A submerged grave
Or from a flower that blooms at the foot of a grave
Everyone finds a home in the end─
Ants under a prayer mat
Girls in my voice
A squirrel weaves home over a dead bull’s skull
A poem too shall have a home
In the heart of an exile or some awaiting eyes
A poem can complete a wheel
Left incomplete by its creator
A roaring sky is not enough for a poem
But it can easily fit in a platter
Flowers, tears and bells can be put into it
It can be sung in the dark
And dried in the heat of festivals
You can see it
In empty utensils, vacant kurtas and cradles
You can hear it
Accompanying pushcarts and funerals
You can kiss it
Amidst crowded seaports
You can knead it
in a tub made from stone
You can grow it
In the mint beds
No night can darken
A poem
No sword can cut it
And no wall can imprison it
A poem
Like clouds
Like air, like a street
May part ways anywhere
Like a father’s hand.

Sarvat Hussain ©translation by Ashaq Hussain Parray



Thursday 6 February 2020

Weaving Poverty


How much courage do you need to think
About my father beyond the Shawls, and the Shikaras;
Beyond the fishermen and the frozen forests;
And the roaring 1990s, and that bloody Jhelum
That ferried the Gods across the mountains;
Once in a blue moon, we visit each other
(Though the soldiers often visit us during CASOs)
And wonder whether the past was our present
Or if the otherwise is true;
We trace our memories as far back
As the black crow’s beak can tell;
It once did caw-caw God’s name and fell;
(Mother says, “Crows grow a beak every century
And perish after the number reaches seven”)
My father weaves exquisite oriental carpets
That grow trees of hope; birds of spring─
As the trees turn into woods and the birds
Travel to the warm zones, the carpet falls down,
Done, on a broker’s shoulder bound to New Delhi;
My father loses track─ his eyes blur and thighs tremor;
“One day”, he says, “I shall own birds and the spring
And gather dew drops in my lawn or rest like a king. 

© Ashaq Hussain Parray




Thursday 23 January 2020

The Tryst between History and Memory


I am tied to the bonnet of history riding fast
On the roads built over the bones of my ancestors;
A bird flying high over my head falls down dead
Shot by the accurate fire, a hiding sniper fired;
As I parade through the blood canals of past
Smoke and dust slap my eyes;
If only the Gods were kind to us─ in this slaughterhouse
Of ailing minds, of marked bodies; of wounded souls;
Hush! where is that sound coming from?
Must be the dawn of darkness cracking past
The despair of hope wandering where the light flew
Into a gorge of sorrows that defy human intellect;
There is an art to darkness, of darkness; one that grows into
A heart of hope without flaws tied to my existence;
If only we were kind to us─ in this amnesiac life
Of killing with joy, of bartering sorrows, of dealing with the dead;
Hope is a thing past when history defies your memory;
Hope is a thing lost when memory defies your history;
The present leaves us smitten; the steel insects of time
Biting us while we grope to awake;
There is an art to darkness; one that grows dark
Into memory exposed like a dandelion head
That grows into my lawn; I was never the gardener
Of my lawn; the records prove it neither;
History tied me to a bonnet; I am sailing through
Life─ of un-forgiveness; of rushing to the judgement
Despite the scriptural warning; “thou shall not judge.”
Am I wrong if I stake claim to my body?
Am I wrong if two roads don’t divulge in my case
And I have no choice to make?
I stay gazing like the ancient human worried;
Shocked; dazzled; by the too much of history;
History be kind to my memory; memory be kind to my history
The two can meet and have lunch together;
Who denied us lunch together? ─ In rain;
Through snow; in wind; through fog!
We could be kind to each other;
And seek refuge in a lunch together ─ where
I make no claim to sit on a chair while the attendant
Waits for my call; where the bill that I pay
Does not hurt his eyes;
History- be kind to us; memory; be kind to us.
©Ashaq Hussain Parray


Tuesday 24 December 2019

No Country for Women


This is no country for young women and others
Where the old men counsel each other how better
To sell the vernal dreams teeming in thousands
Of poverty-stricken bosoms;
This is no country for young women and others
Where the carpenter happily carries a crucifix
To hang my brother in his own lawn
While Mary watches blood dripping down
The face of Jesus;
This is no country for young women and others
Where a pack of people tell each other that:
I was not born here,
I never lived here
Or I had fled persecution
And sought refuge here
This is no country for young women and others:
Where my ancestors dreamt of living one day
With dignity and walking the roads
Like their own.

Judas! My brother, I don’t hate you
Though you desert me every day
You pretend to be my friend!
We were born at the same place
Though dyed in different colours!
Judas! My brother don’t desert me
While I am taken to the cross
I will write on my bosom with blood:
I was born here before God ordered
The Chaos to settle down, I was here when
The first rains washed away the dirt of earth!

©Ashaq Hussain Parray


Tuesday 5 November 2019

Pencil Poems


Pencil
       (I)
Sitting on a bench
A girl in blue jeans
Pares a pencil
And a rose sprouts.
The pencil writes
Black words
On a white paper
As if black butterflies.

The pencil writes
Words white
On the canvass of heaven
As if the moon and the stars!
The pencil carves
Golden wings
On the lap of the universe
As if the dreams of a girl!

              (II)
Near the leg of a table,
A paralyzed hand asked
To a broken blue pencil:
“Can you write?”
Hesitant, the pencil answered:
“Yes. I can write”
And I can paint
Even your portrait!
If only
You could pare with a blade
The plaster from my soft skin!”

Amazed! I
Kept listening to the Zee TV
The voice of Hussein Bakhsh:
Rahne Do Abhi Sagar-O-Mina…!
“Let the goblet of wine near me…!”

  (III)
My lovely little daughter
Lights a pencil
With a sharpener!
In the space of white paper
Light begins to scatter.

A black sparrow takes flight with a tree
A fountain springs off the peacock’s eyes
In the air Agni on his chariot flies
An aeroplane taxis on a road
A tiger talks to a cow.
On the top of a black tree
Rises the one-eyed sun
And above it a piece of cloud
And on the cloud’s forehead
A bluefish flying.
In the waves of a stream
A golden butterfly swimming!

My dear daughter
In her merriments
Draws many pictures!
But when the school teacher
Gives homework to her
My doll often casually in anger
Breaks the nib.
The flame of pencil extinguishes
And the horizon of white paper
Is left with only spirals of smoke!

Jayant Parmer © translation Ashaq Hussain Parray

Saturday 2 November 2019

The tower of Babel


Did you hear about the tower of Babel?
Did you hear about its top storey?
Seers and prophets told me
There is a high throne
At the top storey of the tower
On which sits God 
God and his God
His holy existence
And under the ground of Babel,
Jacob’s children
Are kept living in dying pain.
This is their fate
While God sits relaxed since genesis.

Jaun Elia ©translation Ashaq Hussain Parray



Gone are the days by Mirza Ghalib

Gone are the days when I would  smell your fragrance And remember your face at the sight of a flower                                ...