TRANSLATED FROM THE URDU BY RIZWAN AKHTAR

I always get late by Munir Niazi 

I always get late doing everything
something important, a promise
to call someone! call someone back!

to help or console a friend
to meet one by treading old paths
I always get late!

or to put heart in a stroll imbued
with seasons in transition,
to remember someone same as to forget
I always get late!

to ward off grief before someone’s death,
to tell someone what he took real
was an illusion,
I always get late…

Earring by Majeed Amjad

only if I could have hung like an earring in your earlobes
confused but passionate at night unknowingly only
to possess you would have silently dropped, but
when in the morning half withered flowers trickled
from your tresses on not finding me in your ears you
would become desperate searching in each fragrant
wrinkle of your bed all the while your supple fingers
feel me in hands, again you would wear me on
now wary you would not take the risk of taking
me off, neither could you bear separation
intoxicated by intimacy I too would remain attached
only if I could have hung like an earring in your earlobes.

A Blind Junk Dealer by Noon. Meem. Rashid

over city’s crannies are scattered
chopped ruined dreams
of which the city dwellers are ignorant
I roam day and night in alley’s nooks
collecting dreams
forge them in heart’s furnace
so they are purged, acquire limbs
glossy lips, cheeks, chiseled necks
like brides coming out of bridles
finding love of their lives,

“buy dreams! buy!”
with morning I call out
standing in a square
“dreams are original or phony”
clients haggle as if they
are connoisseurs of dreams,

but I am not a maestro
rather an artisan
twice removed from reality
only a remote mimic
but these are dreams are my livelihood,

evening falls
I chant again
“buy these golden dreams free
utterly free” and the buyers
recoil in fear suspecting free
dreams a fake merchandise
a jugglery, a selling tactic.
doubting by the time they
reach home dreams
would melt, scatter, evaporate
“worthless dreams, moreover
sold by a blind junk dealer”,

night falls
dreams stacked on my head
I return with a grumpy face
whining whole night while in sleep
“please! buy these dreams”
rather I will pay the cost”
“buy dreams’
my dreams
my dreams
‘their price too’.

Ghazal by Mustfa Zaidi 

the storm came and the foot prints were lost
the one whom I loved from heart was also lost

in the gathering I looked in all directions but
no one was so alone in the crowd and so lost

no one could recognize the voice far and wide
neither could empathize with silence’s pain, so lost

oh! the eagerness of walking barefoot caused blisters
on feet, sadly the desert was not vast enough for getting lost,

in Canaan Yousef’s dress was fated to tear apart
even then Zuleika could not touch him; all lost!

Tell me! desert rovers in search of love and fidelity
you found a doe-eyed Beloved or like Qais also lost

Sohni crossed stream on a raw pitcher to meet her lover
on the other hand, the strong boats drowned and lost.

Translator’s Note
These are translations of four modern Urdu poets from Pakistan. Modern Urdu poetry on one hand remains loyal to its Arab-Persian base on the other hand is verily open to experimentalism arriving through writers’ exposure to western modern poetry. Munir Niazi (1928-2006) is a modern Urdu poet who has written both Ghazal and nazm (a loosely defined form of free verse). His poetry approaches existential conundrums. In “I always get late’, a simple but proud reflection on temporal conditions, the poet attempts to grapple with the ever complex question of time- something T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock also encounters. On the contrary, Majeed Amjad’s (1914-
1974) poem ‘Earring’ is steeped in Romantic tradition of classical Urdu poetry and despite it being a free verse the poet captures the mellifluous, the rhythmic, the hypnotic – all elements at the core of the genre of Ghazal. The Persian word Ghazal literally means talking to women. The pain of unrequited love personified by a quotidian image of the beloved’s trinket the poet expresses his erotic desires with a control. The lover and the beloved are too conscious of scandal; an aesthetic streak in Urdu poetry. Noon. Meem Rashid (1910-75) is modern experimental poet. He can be called the Ezra Pound of Urdu verse, yet a voice deeply rooted in his milieu. Having lived in America and Europe his work is hybrid and contains an osmosis of Eastern and Western sensibility. The poem ‘Blind Junk Dealer’ is an appropriate version of indigenous flâneur; the vendor of dreams/artist is eking out survival walking through an urban crowd. It also echoes Dylan Thomas’ ‘In My Art or Sullen Craft’. Lastly, in these translations I have followed the ‘process model’ carefully straddling between the literal and the interpretative.

Also, read a Malayalam Poem by R Sangeetha, translated to English by Nithya Mariam John, and published in The Antonym.  

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