TRANSLATED FROM KASHMIRI BY MOHAMMAD ZAHID
Contemplations about Life (One)
You have to save the scorching summer in your eyes
You’ll have to burn to ashes the shadowy evenings
keep blazing words available to your pen
And pour the fire of Red Sea while turning the pages
Write history,
Write, how long is the journey of existence
Write, what is dying, living, annihilating, nourishing
Write, keep writing,
Tell me, if you know the skill of autumn,
Is merely this the greatness of holy months
That we should forgive or forget
Ahead of you cold deserts are awaiting
The icy dreamy are gazing from all sides
The blood in your veins shall freeze if you ever forget
Your hands shall turn into ice if you forgive
Only you have to write the uninterrupted saga of existence
Only you have to traverse the cold desert of restless madness
Hold the boiling time in your hands every moment
Beneath your feet crush steadily the blazing fire and molten lead
Pick the embers of the breath and rein the wind
Wield the pen, for pen is your provision for the journey
Understand solitude, for only you have to record it
Go into Maagh* and bring the news of spring
Write the history of the holy months
*Maagh Eleventh month of the Bikrami calendar, corresponding to January-February
Contemplations About Life (Two)
This date when the words remained in journey
Without light the same way
As dark nights are without the moon
The pages were lost the way
voice gets lost in the dense forests
However the echoes
are alive within the rocky mountains
Outside the sound of fresh footsteps of my forefathers
They traversed the borders
Meaning there is still something left
But what shall we name that caravan
Over whom the sun blazed as if from a height of seven spears
Over whom time made mandatory the doomsday
Who still owe the debt of the journeys
The journey still lies ahead
It is said that the dark dreams of the dawn are yet to break
It is said that the shadow of time is elongating every moment
May the darkness thicken,
this Amavasya, lengthen
May the tents of the caravan tear down
May every traveller cry for water
May the light of the eyes get lost
The journey still stays incomplete
The new journey
Foresight is born in the dark chambers of the heart
Foresight lives in the lightening, and thunderstorms
Foresight becomes a rescue in the chains
Look ahead, you’ll find the visions of all sides of the universe
Look and dive inside yourself
You’ll find the possibility of life
That limitless, yet another caravan is racing
Bearing a flag
over which the sparks have written
the oath of Aadiyaat* is awaited
*Amavasya, the night when moon is not visible.
*Aadiyaat (Charging horses). Reference to Chapter 100, Surah Aadiyat of the holy Quran
Two Penny Dreams
Verdigris on the mirror, the sight is clouded
How much fog has the Pharaohic limner in his brush
The whole sky of the eyes is a canvas of meaningless ugly abstract art
Every colour is feeding milk to its own serpent
The faceless spirits of applause blow own their hell-fires
Hey you the knower of the netherworlds
Who kept stored so much of cocaine in my eyes?
A few of my dreams of solitude got lost in this forest of din
The path between my body and my being
is lost completely
Also, read Poems by Laura Recanati on The Antonym.
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