रहम को पनाह न देंगे अब,

कि ज़लीलों में बस जाएँ;

आग वो दूसरी कहती है,

कहीं फिर न तरस जाएँ.

Raham ko panah na denge ab,

ki zaleelon me bas jaayen;

Aag vo doosri kehti hai,

kahin phir na taras jaayen.

मेरे यार

यार मेरे, इन सियाह शामों

की ढेर लगा दें तो कितनी ऊँची होगी?

इतनी, कि सारे बिखरे रिश्तों से ऊँची?

यार मेरे, इन सियाह शामों

के दाग लग चुके हैं,

तुम्हारे लम्बे से लम्बे हाथों की

उलझी हुई लकीरों पे,

और इस चादर पे.

एक ऐसी शाम आए,

जब ये सियाही दस्तक देके

तुम्हारे अधखुले दरवाज़े को

पार कर, चौखट से मुकर जाए,

तो इन दागों को देखकर खुश हो ना तुम.

और जिस फुर्ती से ये भी

उतर उतर के एक कोने में

इकट्‍ठा होती जाएँगी,

उस तेज़ी से घबराना नहीं -

यही सोचके खुश होना

कि शाम की फ़ितरत ही

डामाडोल है.

हल्दी

आज मेरे हाथ से हल्दी की डिब्बी छूट गई,

देखो, शायद मेरे हाथ पीले हो गए.

कहाँ कल तक आप मुझसे पूछा करती थीं

कि खाने में क्या बनाऊँ.

अखाड़े में काई जम गई है, अम्मा,

अब वैसी धूल ही कहाँ, जो हमारे घर में

सिंकते बैंगन से उड़ती चिंगारियों की तरह

उड़ा करती थी.

यह रसोई पता नहीं किसकी है.

आँगन से कुछ बच्चे न जाने क्यों मुझे उसी नज़र से देखते हैं

जिसमें मैंने शायद आपको बहुत साल क़ैद रखा.

इस बड़े से घर में मैं भूखी हूँ;

कहाँ घर के हर कोने में बहस की वजह छुपा करती थी.

For Home

For you have been at the back of my mind,

and the front of my mind,

for years,

and for you the city is no more home

than it is for me,

for we both wandered there,

or away from there,

for reasons sometimes sentimental.

For going home is a process,

for peace of mind and a piece of memory to check on,

once in a while.

For you complete me,

you with your way of changing,

ever so often.

For you are home.

Maar-Geer

The snake catcher has come.

Does this means there are snakes here?

Did someone call him,

or did he come unbidden,

uncharacteristically?

He brings old lore,

baskets.

Now catch your snakes,

and then disappear again,

like you do,

your basket full for now,

and leave us on tenterhooks,

though we know you exist

a word or two away,

maar-geer.

Because we have died

Because you are dead to me,
I cannot hate you,
I should not speak badly of the dead.

Because you have killed me by your indifference,
I kill you back,
you emperor of stone and king of primates,
this is my revenge —
I will make you public;
you are no longer mine,
no longer secret.

Go on, with wist after another life,
mine is too risky for you,

I renounced my unsure self for you,
and became a self serving beast.

Now I renounce my fear,
I don’t care anymore, even if I fall,
I will walk bold,
like the bloodthirsty prowler of the night
you made me.

Manual

        This is how I begin to fall in love:
it all starts with walking
with him,
in a sparse moonlight
and scarely more drizzle,
some ganja, some music,
and small steps.
Little things.

        This is how I hold back:
walking three feet asunder
while he asks,
'Do you know what is going to happen?'

        This is how I fall out of love (a):
a phone call from you, far away,
telling the story of a storm and a Jewish house in Boxburg
where you stayed a night, and read Camus.

        This is how I fall out of love (b):
a couple of folk musicians from Shantiniketan, 
friends of friends,
staying up all night to the sound of khomuk and dotaara.

        This is how I fall back in love:
the sound of your voice in my ear,
        — unmediated by head phone, ear phone, mobile phone —
and your hand in mine,
your knee under the table,
your laugh like a child’s.
Looking at you,
just looking.
Absent little things.

        This is how I live.

And when you tell me you are going to travel 
some more this summer,
and 
“Backpacking across Europe!” I say,
And you say, “I have to buy a backpack, actually.”
I forget all else and laugh full and loud.

        This is how I survive the distance. 

Over the years they shared a silent space

Over the years they shared a silent space —
sparse words were spoken in the early hours of morning
while everyone else was still asleep.
Even the house sleeps at that time,
the mosquitoes drowsy from last nights’ drunkennesses
and the air moist and warm, thick with used breath.

Over the years they shared a silent space —
she had her own day to begin, and he his own.
Ever so often the years would mill around, daring them,
mocking them,
change, change,
but some things did not change.

— Coffee for father-in-law, mother-in-law
— Tiffin for kids
— Lunch for everybody
— Leave for office

After a while was

— Coffee for father-in-law
— Lunch for everybody

And things do change again,

— Coffee for father-in-law (no sugar)
— Tiffin for self
— Instructions for cook
— Leave for school

(While the walls changed with every transfer,
and menus as well,
the clocks were carefully packed and unpacked each time.)

And now when I am home sometimes,
Roles reverse;
just to set right the malicious years I see my mother,
schoolteacher,
off to school.

Over the years they shared a silent space,
Over regulation tumblers of coffee.

I am very sure, at times,
that when he dies she will find herself moorless
in the hours dedicated to a routine forgotten over the years,
adhered to like clockwork.
And at other times I am not so sure.

Out of Print

When a long lifetime was ending she woke up
to find all his words
tacked to the crumbling walls,
and all in different languages, none of which she spoke.

They were paper cut-outs,
some sepia, some gold,
some interminably old.
Others light, carefree, new, in a sense —
but like newspaper clippings of Godefroy’s flight,
were dated to long ago.
Some also, were eaten by moths in slow degrees,
she could peer through the holes they left.

The cut-outs were in the shape of children,
airplanes,
hot-air balloons,
books
and roots.
Can you imagine a paper cut-out that looks like a root?
It was the hardest to recognise.

She had collected them herself,
What for? she asked,
and since she was the only one around,
only she could answer.
The only thing one could make with old paper
(she mused,)
is papier mâché
from which to fashion boxes
to house,
undoubtedly,
more scraps.

She finally decided to consult an expert on these things,
Who did not have anything heartening to say.
She put all the scraps together in a neat, orderly manner
and showed them to him,
in order, perhaps, to ascertain their
worth.

All the valuer could come up with was
Madam, this language is out of print.

Missing

Look, what I say means nothing,
or less than nothing —
among the native Americans nothing is an entity.
We in the Orient invented the zero, it seems.
To call my words nothing is to give them shape.
The feeling that a child must have
when he wants to say something and simply has no vocabulary
(or worse, we cannot recognise his language)
for it.

But you know Ghalib might be on my side,
it’s easy to attribute avant-garde feminism to writers
who are dead.
That gha’ib-e-gha’ib,
the absence of an absence,
is the world.

If I am an absence
that makes me kind of

omnipresent,

doesn’t it?

Haha!
(Oh I must hide this before he gets h

Mime

Let me long again:

White face, fear not,

Whatever's left is what you've got.

And this shall not be the last time:

Blue face, don't scream,

Maybe it was all a dream.

For you are the mimic:

Green face, don't misbehave,

Someone else has what you crave.

I am the mimic:

Black face, juju begone,

This madness must not carry on.

Let's play mime:

Pink face, be happy now,

Or have you forgotten how?

Red face, kindly explain

Why you would come back again.

Brown face belongs to me,

If the colours let me be.

For you are the mimic, I am the mimic, let's play mime:

Let me long again and this shall not be the last time.

Bats

Home, I said, is a grey in the morning,
a cup of tea to hold;
A door, at will, to close or not to close.
A story told
in fights and makings-up, and fights some more -
an elixir of life
it seems, when we begin to forget the
others' ways.

Home, I said, is where we begin to fly,
even if it's like bats,
In the nighttime, stealthily, when no one
is watching us.
The first cigarette, the first swig of beer
would never taste so sweet
if home said, Ok, Do What You Will, Just
Find Your Self Soon.

Home, I said, is where you are, my spectre,
who often still at night
wake me up from memory, to place me
in another.

THE BURDEN.

She cried for joy,
my mother.
I was no burden, a bundle of joy,
perched on her shoulder.


He cried in ecstasy,
my love,
I was a burden, but a bundle of joy,
leaning on his shoulder.


They cried in sorrow,
my kith and kin.
I was but a burden, no bundle of joy,
sleeping on their shoulders.



(Sushila Subramanyam.)

Holiday

Come home, he said,
But do not bring
Your friends who smoke or drink,
Or anyone
our neighbours will
look at and stop to think,
“Oh ho, just see
How progressive
These people want to be.”
Come home, and sit
With me awhile
Till old is dead and gone,
And then remember:
When you still
are young you can be wrong;
but in old age
– you know too well –
Tradition saves your life,
and when you’re torn
by doubt, you know
Tradition ends your strife.
For what is safer
Than the safe
That old custom affords?
The comfort of
the knowledge that
you will be backed by hordes.
So in the break
for summer or for
for winter, fall or spring,
Come home and sit
– or stand – by all
the lessons you have learned
from parents or
from relatives
who teach you how to spurn
these people, like
these friends of yours
correctly; in the way
our ancestors
would tell you to;
Hear no evil,
nor say the name
of God in vain, or keep
the company
of folks like these.

A Year In The Life

There will be some this year who will remember
The sixteenth of this month
not as the day general election results came out
but as a long phone conversation from an airport departure lounge;
a friend leaves.

There will be some this year who will recall
running down the streets of Rome and jumping
fully clothed
into the Trevi fountain;
Even if you support ManYoo, who cares,
just take off your scarf and yell for Barca.

There will be some this year who will remember
the Sixth Pay Commission, some who will remember only
Sending money to sons in Europe
Sons with a taste for expensive wines.

There will be some this year who will not remember their age
when they were married off
(at thirteen, fourteen) to boys far away,
but will remember that puberty had set in already,
and so the young bride had no betrothal period,
But was sent off to her new home soon enough.

There will be some who will remember this year as the year
of finishing.
Finishing college, finishing off ties to a city that no longer exists
as home.

There will be some this year, like every year,
who when asked when they last held a baby,
will not have to think back,
but only look over their shoulder to see
new years.

A Day In The Life: Aprils and other days

Meeting an old friend
From here and there,
Unshared memories spill over
into cups of tea;
a cigarette and a half on the Tube:
Busker made a choice,
got arrested the night
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

Meeting an old friend,
No memories in common,
So much more to swap
Like casettes, before CDs
could be FedEx-ed across the oceans.

Meeting an old friend,
Pipe, hookah, shorts and corduroy,
Picking up the game of chess shelved years ago.

Meeting an old friend with a new friend,
A new friend with an old,
Taking manual photographs of
Fingers, hair, teeth, shoes.
No faces, only words.

A Day In The Life: Late in the Evening

The stars lined up obligingly,
The moon sang a thousand tunes;
There is an old garden,
overrun with weeds
behind the place:
a retreat
further

than the old mansion itself is,
an anachronistic rift
in time, vantage point to
hide in, and watch in
secret the world
as it flits
away.

Hidden in pools of light, like ghosts
we wandered, precarious
footholds and crumbling walls.
Somebody lived here
Once, long ago
(Before you
and I

trespassed into their spectral home)
And had memories older
than us and ours, of hands
clasped and promises
made while looking
into the
moonlight.

We were not the first trespassers:
The city had crept up round
the house long ago,
by degrees, Metro
Rail being the last
to encroach
upon

The space that surrounds it, a space
where Ahmed Ali’s Delhi
breathes; where fear and desire
collude, and whisper
your dark secrets
back to you.
To you

And I, whose life is measured out
with coffee spoons, and looks like
it always will, unless
I find the courage
to see this place
demolished –
a dream

destroyed – the building is condemned,
Like the fate of the ghosts that
silhouette the skyline
on Barakhamba
Road, late in the evening,
sometimes.

Comes to the North

Death comes to the North
by inches
Like frostbite
Turning everything black
Starting with the ear
That hears the news.

Far away from Coimbatore,
Where most of the family lives
and dies
In a place called Vanaprastha;
an old age colony,
very popular.

This stage in life
- and the next -
Is for meditation,
concentration,
renunciation -
In the forest, only bare essentials.
You mean
Concentration Camp?

We avoid eating tonight's meal
Lest our lukewarm sentiment
should make the food unpalatable.

Our roots died today;
We go on,
Like headless chickens.

Death comes to the North
at two rupees a minute,
relentless, like the cat
that tries every morning
to enter the kitchen,
warm milk.

Death comes to the North,
Briefly,
a syringeful of anaesthesia,
one prick and you go numb.

Death comes to the North,
then goes away,
flying south for the winter.
It is too cold here
for news of Death to cause a stir.

Discovering Agha Shahid Ali

Another stumble-upon find. Anyone familiar with this poet please quote some more!
Not much pirated stuff of his online. Must go hunt for his poetry.



This I found at a blog by one Eduardo C. Corral. Thanks Eduardo!

The Dacca Gauzes

. . . for a whole year he sought to accumulate the most exquisite Dacca gauzes.
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Those transparent Dacca gauzes
known as woven air, running
water, evening dew:

a dead art now, dead over
a hundred years. "No one
now knows," my grandmother says,

"what it was to wear
or touch that cloth." She wore
it once, an heirloom sari from

her mother's dowry, proved
genuine when it was pulled, all
six yards, through a ring.

Years later when it tore,
many handkerchiefs embroidered
with gold-thread paisleys

were distributed among
the nieces and daughters-in-law.
Those too now lost.

In history we learned: the hands
of weavers were amputated,
the looms of Bengal silenced,

and the cotton shipped raw
by the British to England.
History of little use to her,

my grandmother just says
how the muslins of today
seem so coarse and that only

in autumn, should one wake up
at dawn to pray, can one
feel that same texture again.

One morning, she says, the air
was dew-starched: she pulled
it absently through her ring.

_______________________________

I remember Tha'mma from The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh; Ghosh seems to have been influenced by Agha Shahid Ali - he has written about him;
it's that same kind of absent sadness with which she asks where the borders are...

This is one poet worth pursuing.

Links to:
THE SHADOW LINES by Amitav Ghosh [via Google Books]
THE COUNTRY WITHOUT A POST OFFICE by Agha Shahid Ali [via Google Books]

हो गई है पीर परबत सी, पिघलनी चाहिए

इस हिमालय से कोई गंगा निकालनी चाहिए

हर सड़क, पर हर गली, हर गाँव में

हाथ लहराते हुए हर लाश चलनी चाहिए

सिर्फ़ हंगामा खड़ा करना मेरा मकसद नहीं

मेरी कोशिश है की यह सूरत बदलनी चाहिए

मेरे सीने में नहीं तो तेरे सीने में सही

हो कहीं भी आग लेकिन आग जलनी चाहिए।



by Dushyant दुष्यन्त