Afzal Ahmad Syed

You Live In Beautiful Circles

You live in beautiful circles
your hair is held
by a round pin
so responsibly

A costly chain
submits itself
to your neck

A watch that is never wrong
lies against your wrist

A delicate belt
embraces your waist

Your feet
are encircled by those shoe-straps
through which you walk on our earth

I will not mention those hidden circles
that might hold you
let them remain just as beautiful
as they are

I have never played on you
the game of taking off clothes
in my imagination

You live in beautiful circles
and I in difficult lines
what can I do for you
but
come running back to you
with the ball in my mouth
that you kicked

Azra Abbas

A Dot Might Appear

A dot might appear from somewhere
that could not be put
on any word
and the dot
alone
off by itself
would stand there
sustained by some illusion
waiting
for a word to come
on which it could be put

It could also happen
that the dot
would wait centuries
for that word

It could also happen
that after centuries had passed
all the words would decay
and rot away
and be absorbed
and nothing would be left
only the dot
would be left

Sarwat Hussain

A Poem Can Start From Anywhere

A poem can start from anywhere
from a pair of shoes
    or from a grave that sank with the rains
or from the flower that bloomed at the foot of the grave
Everyone has found a shelter
somewhere or other
the ants, under the prayer mat
    and the girls, in my voice
in a dead bullock’s skull, the squirrel has made a home
A poem surely has a home too
in some exile’s heart or in waiting eyes
There is a wheel left unfinished by its maker
a poem can complete it
An echoing sky is not enough for a poem
    but a poem can easily fit into a lunchbox
Flowers, tears and bells can be strung on it
It can be sung in the darkness
It can be dried in the sun of festival days
You can see it
    in empty pots, empty shirts, and empty cradles
You can hear it
    walking along beside handcarts and funeral processions
You can kiss it
    in the crowd by the docks
You can knead it
    in a stone trough
You can grow it
    in flowerbeds
A poem--
    cannot be darkened by any night
    cannot be cut by any sword
    cannot be confined by any wall
A poem--
    can go off and leave you anywhere
    like a cloud
    like wind
    like the road
    like a father’s hand--

Sara Shagufta

The House Of Empty Eyes  
 

The house of empty eyes is expensive
        let me become a line of dust
God has forgotten to create
a number of people
        let the sound of footsteps linger
        in my desolate eyes
 
The taste of fire
is a lamp
and the taste of sleep
is man
        pull me as tight as stone
        so people won't know
        I have no tongue
With God's tongue in my mouth
sometimes I become a flower
sometimes a thorn
 
Give the chains freedom
for man is more of a prison
than they are

I have to die alone
so
these eyes
this heart
        give them to some
        empty person

Zeeshan Sahil

White Carpet

The carpet shop
has a white carpet
and everyone wants to buy it
and everyone’s obsessed with fear--

it will get dirty
faster than other carpets
the first dropped cigarette
will scar it
muddy feet
will mark it
pet cats
will claw it
hot cups of tea
will scald it Its beauty pleases no one
and everyone wants
to have its color changed
or to see it left forever
in the shop
with no one to buy it
or to have the carpet shop
catch fire some night

and the white carpet be
burned.

Tanveer Anjum

What Happened This Time

I picked up a shell from the shore
closed up my tears inside it
and threw it into the deep sea,
With a sharp knife
I carved a line of long travels
on my hand,
And bought the kind of shoes
that constantly wound my feet
when I walk.  

This time I've built a house
with the kind of windows
that only mirror the inside,
and with the kind of fire
that lights itself when it's needed,
and with the kind of wind
that doesn't need the door opened for it,
and with the kind of things
that are rooted to the floor in their places.  

I've stolen my seasons,
and grassy fields,
deserts, skies
I've hidden a butterfly in a book
and a dream in my eyes.
And to know about love
I've
read a poem.
And for sound
I've sung a song.  

In deep darkness
I've closed my eyes,
in the glass of my house
I've seen myself.
And I've remembered
a stranger
who went down into the deep sea
to look for the shell
in which I'd imprisoned my tears
and which I had thrown away.

 

Saiduddin

Ants

How many miles ants walk
on the earth--
how many ants come under our feet
and get crushed--
these are uncountable.
But when ants crawl on our bodies
we can count them,
we can form some estimate
of their travels.

How you detach a biting ant
from your body--
this an ant
or its broken limbs
can tell you.
About the homes of ants
you can never know more than this:
that they live in gaps in the doors
or cracks in the walls
or keep moving all night long.
But you cannot know
where they get together
and hold secret meetings.

But when you
like a honeypot
a sugarbowl
or a piece of meat
become a food store for them,
then they will gather in countless numbers
and divide the countless pieces of you
among themselves,
and will show you the inner parts
of the gaps in the doors
and the cracks in the walls
and even those corners
where they held
secret meetings.

Translated by Frances W. Pritchet and Asif Farrukhi

A Note On Urdu Poetry

Faiz Ahmad Faiz  is the most prominent and the finest of the poets who subscribed to the progressive ideology. he was singularly successful in striking a balance between art an ideas. He was drew upon sources other than Urdu and Persian and imparted an individual tone to his poetry. he did not raise slogans; he only uttered soft notes of expostulation. he was inspired more by the spirit of liberation than by slogans raised elsewhere. Prominent among other progressive poets were Asrarul Haq Majaz , Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Ali Sardar Jafri , Jan Nisar Akhter , Kaifi Azmi  and Sahir Ludhianawi . They are mentioned here not only for the individual qualities of their poetry by also for their importance in this movement at a particular juncture in literary history. Despite the deep political complexion of the Progressive Writers Movement, it prominence was a short-lived affair. The next generation of poets expressed certain misgivings about their emphasis on class struggle in a materialistic and scientific world. The new poet wished to shake off all external shackles and apprehend his own experience for himself.

The modernism

N. M. Rashed and Miraji are the two most remarkable poets in this group. They along with Faiz, represent in the Urdu language what Eliot and the Symbolists do in English and French. They appeared later, but also showed a unique resilience and vitality. Faiz was a poet with a message, one woven artistically into a pattern of symbols and delivered in a mellifluous tones. Rashed treated the Urdu language in a fresh way and created complex symbiotic fusion. Faiz appeals alike to the philanthropist and the philanderer, the pious and profane, the music makers and dreamers of dreams, but Rashed appeals only to a select readership. Faiz emerged as a myth in his own lifetime while Rashed and Miraji are yet to be fully appreciated. Rashed's resources are immense. The merging to the eastern and western influences accounts for the richness of his verse enhanced by linguistic innovation and poetic skill. Miraji, who reminds one of Tristan Corbiere in his bohemianism, drew upon Oriental, American and French sources, meditated upon time, death, the mystery if human desires, the raptures of sex and wrote in a variety of verse forms -- regular, free, and prose-like. He opted for esoteric symbolism, resorted to the stream-of-consciousness method and emerged as a unique modernist movement in Urdu poetry.

It was on this tradition that individual poets later developed their own version of modernism. Majeed Amjad , Akhtarul Iman  and Mukhtar Siddiqi  deserve special mention here. A poem for them was a delicate work of art that succeeded or failed for its artistic worth. Akhtarul Iman wrote ironic, nostalgic and dramatic poems, while Majeed Amjad wrote in an inimitable introspective mood and ideas. They served as models for the younger poets to follow. The impact of Rashed, Miraji and Faiz was immense and far-reaching. Their successors echoed them, learnt from them and so came to acquire their own voices in course of time.

The generations of poets since the 1950s faced new predicaments. The Partition of India was an experience they had suffered, while the world around was also terribly alive and eventful. Groups of poets followed on after another; Wazir Agha , Muneer Niyazi, Ameeq Hanfi, Balraj Komal, Qazi Saleem  grappled with the world around in an idiom and form that were decidedly new and had nothing to do with Progressive aesthetics. All of them acquired their own individual identities and made their mark in the development of modern poetry. They looked back at their won masters-- Mir and Ghalib-- and fared forward to Eliot and Empson. Modern literary and philosophical movements no longer remained alien. Realism, symbolism, existentialism, and surrealism, were drawn closer home. Kumar Pashi, Zubair Rizvi, Shahrayar, Nida Fazli  and Adil Mansoori, on the one hand, and Gilani Kamran, Abbas Ather, Zahid Dar, Saqi Farooqi, Iftekhar Jalib, Ahmed Hamesh, Kishwar Naheed  and Fehmida Reyaz, on the other, experimented in form and technique, bringing in new diction and finding a place for new experiences. The new poem had come into being; modernism had firmly established itself by the mid-1970s.

Shaabkhoon, a literary journal, projected this movement in a big way and identified the poets of the new order. Ever since its inception in 1966, it has done a singular job -- especially during the vital 60s and 70s -- of creating a taste for modernism. Shamsur Rehman Farooqi, the most perceptive of the modern Urdu critics, played a vital role in helping recognize the contours of modernism with his critical studies. his studies appraising modern poets, as well as classical poets who bear upon the modern tradition, developed sound critical theories and helped in creating an atmosphere for the acceptance and appreciation of modernism.

Poetry in Pakistan

It may not seem quite right to speak of Urdu poetry in terms of Indian and Pakistani poetry, but it would be reasonable to say that the new urdu poetry in Pakistan is remarkable for its variety and vitality. Emerging from the common sources and traditions of history and culture, poetry in Pakistan has achieved its own frames of reference, its own tones of voice, its own notes of protest, largely because of the socio-political compulsions. Its poetics is characterized by a healthy adherence to tradition and somewhat virile improvisation of the traditional modes of expression.

The new poet in Pakistan has created his own blend of the lyrical with the prosaic, the manifest with the allegorical. he expressed his own predicament and that of the world around him which arouse both hope and fear, dreams and despair. Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Majeed Amjad and Muneer Niyazi, with their vitality and strength, have led us to the still more varied and vibrant Sermad Sehbai, Asghar Nadeem Syed, Afzal Ahmad Syed, Zeeshan Sahil and the vital feminine voices of Kishwar Nahed, Fehmida Reyaz, Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, Sara Shagufta, Shaista Habib and Azra Abbas. All these and many more form part of a formidable poetic scene. They are rich in their experience and execution and may well be placed among the prominent Third World voices that are being heard today with great curiosity and interest.

Modernism is an international phenomenon and modern Urdu poetry is a part of it. It has made its mark with its recognizably individual poetics. The Urdu poet is now free to make his choice; he has drawn upon sources both indigenous and foreign, literary and extra-literary, including philosophy, sociology and mythology. The issues regarding the form of the poem, the language, experiential capital and aesthetic dimensions have been resolved. the modern reader has finally identified his poem.

---- Anisur Rahaman [ An excerpt from the iintroduction to the book  Fire and the Rose : An Anthology of Modern Urdu Poetry , Rupa & Co. 1995 ]