Seven Poems of Pash
Seven Poems of Pash
Translated from
Punjabi
by
Rajesh Sharma
Of all things the most terrible
to be robbed of one’s
labour
is
not the most terrible of things
to suffer torture by the police
is
not
being sold off for a fistful of greed –
no,
no, it’s not
bad it is to be taken unprepared
and bad to freeze in silence from fear
yet
it is not of all things
the
most terrible
to see your truth go down to deceit
is
bad
and
bad to have to read
in a
glow worm’s
light
yet
it is not
the
most terrible of things
is to have a
corpse’s
dead peace
to possess
no discontent
to
endure it all
to be
always leaving home for work
and
work for home . . . no more
the most terrible of all is the dying of the dreams
we once lived for
of all things the most dreadful is the watch
that ticks on your wrist
but seems dead to your eye
the most terrible is the eye that sees all
but
remains dead cold
that
forgets to kiss the world
and hugs the blind fog
rising from things
like steam
the eye that drinks
the
ordinariness of routine
and wears itself out
in a daily back and forth
of all things the most frightening
is
the moonrise on forlorn
yards
of
homes after each massacre
that does not sting
your eyes
like a fist of pepper tossed
of all things the most dreadful
is the song that
steps over a wail
to reach your ear
like a brute’s menacing cough
before a fear-stung family’s door
more terrible than anything is the night
that
falls on skies of living souls
when owls screech
jackals howl
and
darkness cleaves
to doors for
ever shut
the most dreadful is the direction
in
which the soul’s sun
goes down
leaving a shard of dead
sunshine
stuck
in your body’s
east
to be robbed of one’s
labour
is
not the most terrible of all things
to suffer torture by the police
is
not
being sold off for a fistful of greed –
no,
no, it’s not
Humiliation of meanings
you have wilfully humiliated
meanings
who will you blame
if words drift and slip?
these trees ask me
what to call the sun
that has no heat and is not red
I watch the trees
count the wind’s colours
take the season’s measure
and then I cannot proclaim
the sun’s innocence
for the sake of the sun
I line up rude words
like hopeful grooms
you would think I
have hurled myself
from a cliff into some
gorge
the truth is
I have changed the meaning of gorges
taken the wind
for a swing
used the mountain for take-off
I have
for your sake
given another meaning
to suicide
comrade, for you life’s
meanings will change
even if you get to know life
only by the time you die
who will believe you?
who excuse you?
you who have wilfully
disgraced
meanings
I ask
I ask the sun flying across the sky
is this what they call time?
that events
like elephants gone mad
should squelch all human consciousness?
that any question should be
no more than the lapse of a body
absorbed in work?
why crack the stale old joke each time?
why say
we live?
consider
how many among us have anything to do
with anything called life?
what kind of divine mercy falls at once
both on hands torn and bleeding
weeding wheat fields
and on piles of limp flesh
sprawled
on
mandi’s divans?
why lies a screaming silence
frozen
on faces besieged
by the tinkle of ox
bells
and the noise of engines
pulling water?
who chews
on the bicep-fish
of dreams
chopping with fodder?
why does the ploughman in my village
beg
a mere constable
to have
mercy on him?
why is it that every time a man, crushed, screams
they call it a poem?
I ask the sun that flies across the sky
My nightingale
time, my
nightingale, is a bloody dog
come, leave the orchards
see the souls floating on the streets
bark or wail
your singing will now cure none
wasn’t
this the song that froze
like dew on branches
and shrank and fled
like steam
before a mere shard of sunshine?
time, my nightingale, is a bloody dog
it has chewed away the hands of the clock
bitten the walls
pissed on flower pots
who knows what more harm it would’ve
done
hadn’t
the officials put it on leash
and tied it at the bungalow’s gates
my nightingale,
what I do now is different
we’ve
lost all bets that seemed like life
I’d be
a horse
not man any more
the saddle is unbearable to human bones
the bridle hurts too much
my human feet don’t
move
to a ghazal’s
beat
time is a real bloody dog, my nightingale
Face to face with the time fought for
newspapers frighten
me so much
these
days
I fear
they must be carrying
somewhere
the news
of nothing
having happened
maybe you don’t
know
but perhaps you do
how scary it is
when nothing happens
the
eyes
breathless panting
running up and down
endlessly
and things lying still
like
a woman
cold
the likeable chatter in the village satth too
seems like a snake
strangling
in its sleep
a
tree
that yearns to sway
I fear what this world
which
looks wanting
like
vacant chairs
must be thinking of us:
bad that centuries have passed
yet food and work and death
still think
we only live for them
I don’t
quite know
how to put it
to shy dawns
and marshalled nights
and meek dusks
that we didn’t
come here
to be saluted
I wonder where to find
one’s peers in years
whose intimacy keeps some space
for arms outstretched for a hug
even mishaps come
these days
like old men
climbing
a brothel’s stairs
why doesn’t anything happen
like raw lovers
meeting?
how long after all
will this country
blessed
by great souls
escape
a horned grave?
when shall we return
to our homes
that happen like events
we
who
are exiles
from sounds of life
knocking on the door?
when shall we sit around a fire
to hear
its tales of
pride?
one day
we will surely leave
the imprint of our kiss
on the season’s
cheek
and then all earth will be
a strange newspaper
and will carry
it
will one day
the news of many things
happening
Truth
(from Scattered Leaves, Khilre Hoye Varke)
I have never wished the wind to sway
to Vividh Bharati’s
beats
and flirt unseen
with silken drapes
I have never wished pane-filtered hues
to kiss my songs’
lips
whenever I have dreamed
I have seen myself give solace
to a city awash in tears
I have seen cities spawn
against villages
seen toiling hands
folded in greeting
fold into fists
I have never craved to ride a car
my dreams have never spread
beyond the plank outside some shop
on which rickshaw pullers
lie down to sleep and dream
a bidi’s draw
how can I want the wind to sway
to Vividh Bharati’s beats?
I who see hot
winds scorch the fodder
how can I think of lovely liquid eyes?
I see eyes
hopeless lightless
raised skyward
begging for rain
Against diplomatic idiom
when I staggered and fell
right at your feet
you became Buddha
I am still struggling
with wings wounded
I call from a withered garden
beyond the far-away Mansarovar
I don’t speak now
to you
but to the soldier breathing his last
on Kalinga’s
battlefield
how come knowledge is no more
than a rope’s twist
around our necks?
why does salvation lie
through your last hiccups
and mine?
don’t
those footprints
going to Gaya’s
banyan know
that time is ageing in my eyes?
one day
Yashodhara’s
footprints will converge in those
yet for me
the Himalayas grow bigger
each passing moment
soldier, you have seen the country swell
and shrink
on this river’s
this bank and that
but the distant Mansarovar
like a moonlit night’s
third quarter
never knew how and why
man became sometimes a Dravidian
sometimes an Aryan
it never learnt why
the Quran’s
verses and the Vedas rose
like smoke
into man’s nostrils and
eyes
and why the Mansarovar’s water
never returned
to tell the tales of knowledge
shaming the people living on these banks
soldier, the Mansarovar would hardly know
why I
a mere particle of its vapours
didn’t return
from another wandering
with the winds
the Mansarovar is no Abdali
and I don’t
bring a word of threat
the way a patient messenger on the edge does
wherever Shah Nawaz happens to be
a bright silence unsheathed
and keen to speak to him
becomes a word
yet under my wings
the nectar oozing
from a first-time mother’s
nipples
never gave shelter
of any colour among those seven
and you know, soldier
how far language is vile because it is powerless
it calls a wound history
and gives the name of
civilization
to the pain of wounds piled
on wounds?
it seems it thinks every bird to be
a swan
and pearls to be just peas pulses or rice
it knows just this –
that the Mansarovar causes the rivers
to flow
for a folly called the country
to it
the poetry of the Vedas and the Quran is mere smoke
the Mansarovar is a mere lake to it
a dead quiet
and Harivallabh, Tansen or
Ghulam Ali
abstracting words into sounds
are music
it thinks swans sing
when they hear
death’s
approaching steps
it doesn’t,
soldier
sound right
to call a man
a swan
but all this is the mischief of language
that poetry is reduced to smoke
that man sneezing blinded
gives in to regimented obedience
and annoyed with what beats inside
offers to the devil his chest
for medals of valour
and the devil plants nails of gold
in his chest
and teaches him the ways to turn gold
into grain and food into vodka
and then the vodka makes of man
a jackal a fox a wolf
and makes of a pack of wolves
the society
how can the swan say
that Tolstoy came too late, soldier?
that the real story began
long ago
when the ploughman’s
bread was stolen
soldier, if you arise a little
we will leave this vile idiom to die
in Kalinga’s battlefield
and we will head for the Siddhartha
of Kapilavastu
and we will meet
Shankaracharya
on the way
before we give all that knowledge
back
to East India Company
later you can go
live on any piece of the bare earth
and not tell the sea
that real history is
a different story
from the Mansarovar
I will dispatch messages
on the rivers
messages like gypsy songs
like divine pollen
messages mysterious like
hill streams
if you would only arise, soldier
if you would just
arise
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