Last night your faded memory came to me
As in the wilderness spring comes quietly,
As, slowly, in the desert moves thew breeze,
As to a sick man, without cause, comes peace
[Original: Urdu, Translated by: Faiz Ahmed Faiz]
Last night your faded memory came to me
As in the wilderness spring comes quietly,
As, slowly, in the desert moves thew breeze,
As to a sick man, without cause, comes peace
[Original: Urdu, Translated by: Faiz Ahmed Faiz]
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above –
Know that you aren’t alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
Somewhere within your loving look I sense,
Without the least intention to deceive,
Without suspicion, without evidence,
Somewhere within your heart the heart to leave.
To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test. —
To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.
To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.
To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.
To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.
Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You’re twenty-six, and still have some life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I’ll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.
The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes’ rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.
Across these miles I wish you well.
May nothing haunt your heart but sleep.
May you not sense what I don’t tell.
May you not dream, or doubt, or weep.
May what my pen this peaceless day
Writes on this page not reach your view
Till its deferred print lets you say
It speaks to someone else than you.
My love, I love your breasts, I love your nose.
I love your accent and I love your toes.
I am your slave. One word, and I obey.
But please don’t slurp your morning brew that way.
Some days I feel a sadness not of grief
The shadows lengthen on the earth’s relief
Salinas flows by like a silver shawl
A girl waves from the mission wall.
You don’t love me at all? O God. O Shit.
You still ‘respect me.’ Thanks. I value it
About as much as one who’s asked to use
A second hat when he’s in need of shoes.
Since, I discover, my own self-respect
Is quite enough to keep my spine erect
Why is it true my ample self-affection
Will not suffice to buoy me in rejection?
I will be easy company; the blur
Of what I longed for once will fade to space.
No thought that could discomfort you will stir.
My eyes will painlessly survey your face.
I smiled at you because I thought that you
Were someone else; you smiled back; and there grew
Between two strangers in a library
Something that seemes like love; but you loved me
(If that’s the word) because you thought that I
Was other than I was. And by and by
We found we’d been mistaken all the while
From that first glance, that first mistaken smile.
Since for me now you have no warmth to spare
I sense I must adopt a sane and spare
Philosophy to ease a restless state
Fuelled by this uncaring. It will state
A very meagre truth: love like the rest
Of our emotions, sometimes needs a rest.
Happiness, too, no doubt; and so, why even
Hope that ‘the course of true love’ could run even?
How rarely all these few years, as work keeps us aloof,
Or fares, or one thing or another,
Have we had days to spend under our parents’ roof:
Myself my sister, and my brother.
All five of us will die; to reckon from the past
This flesh and blood is unforgiving.
What’s hard is that just one of us will be the last
To bear it all and go on living.
After a long and wretched flight
That stretched from daylight into night,
Where babies wept and tempers shattered
And the plane lurched and whiskey splattered
Over my plastic food, I came
To claim my bags from Baggage Claim
Around, the carousel went around
The anxious travelers sought and found
Their bags, intact or gently battered,
But to my foolish eyes what mattered
Was a brave suitcase, red and small,
That circled round, not mine at all.
I knew that bag. It must be hers.
We hadnt met in seven years!
And as the metal plates squealed and clattered
My happy memories chimed and chattered.
An old man pulled it of the Claim.
My bags appeared: I did the same.
I willed my love to dream of me last night, that we might lie
at peace, if not beneath a single sheet, under one sky.
I dreamed of her but she could not alas humour my will;
it struck me suddenly that where she was was daylight still.
My need has frayed with time; you said it would.
It has; I can walk again across the flood
Of gold sil popples on the straw-gold hills
Under a deep Californian sky that expels
All truant clouds; watch squads of cattle graze
By the radio-telescope; blue-battered jays
Flash raucous squaking by my swivelling head
While squirrels sine-wave past over the dead
Oak-leaves, and not miss you_although I may
Admit that near the telescope yesterday
By a small bushcovered gully I blundered on
Five golden fox-cubs playing in the sun
And wished you had been there to see them play;
But that I only mention by the way.
Let me now sleep, let me not think, let me
Not ache with inconsistent tenderness.
It was untenable delight; we are free–
Separate, equal–and if loverless,
Love consumes time which is more dear than love,
More unreplicable. With everything
Thus posited, the choice was clear enough
And daylight ratified our reckoning.
Now only movement marks the birds from the pines;
Now it’s dark; the blinded stars appear;
I am alone, you cannot read these lines
Who are with me when no one else is here,
Who are with me and cannot hear my voice
And take my hand and abrogate the choice.
Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;
The angled sun
Slants honey-coloured rays
That lessen to the ground
As we bike through
The corridor of Palm Drive
We two
Have reached a safety the years
Can claim to have created:
Unconsumated, therefore
Unjaded, unsated.
Picnic, movie, ice-cream;
Talk; to clear my head
Hot buttered rum – coffee for you;
And so not to bed
And so we have set the question
Aside, gently.
Were we to become lovers
Where would our best friends be?
You do not wish, nor I
To risk again
This savoured light for noon’s
High joy or pain.
Once upon a time a frog
Croaked away in Bingle Bog
Every night from dusk to dawn
He croaked awn and awn and awn
Other creatures loathed his voice,
But, alas, they had no choice,
And the crass cacophony
Blared out from the sumac tree
At whose foot the frog each night
Minstrelled on till morning night
Neither stones nor prayers nor sticks.
Insults or complaints or bricks
Stilled the frogs determination
To display his heart’s elation.
But one night a nightingale
In the moonlight cold and pale
Perched upon the sumac tree
Casting forth her melody
Dumbstruck sat the gaping frog
And the whole admiring bog
Stared towards the sumac, rapt,
And, when she had ended, clapped,
Ducks had swum and herons waded
To her as she serenaded
And a solitary loon
Wept, beneath the summer moon.
Toads and teals and tiddlers, captured
By her voice, cheered on, enraptured:
“Bravo! ” “Too divine! ” “Encore! ”
So the nightingale once more,
Quite unused to such applause,
Sang till dawn without a pause.
Next night when the Nightingale
Shook her head and twitched her tail,
Closed an eye and fluffed a wing
And had cleared her throat to sing
She was startled by a croak.
“Sorry – was that you who spoke? ”
She enquired when the frog
Hopped towards her from the bog.
“Yes,” the frog replied. “You see,
I’m the frog who owns this tree
In this bog I’ve long been known
For my splendid baritone
And, of course, I wield my pen
For Bog Trumpet now and then”
“Did you… did you like my song? ”
“Not too bad – but far too long.
The technique was fine of course,
But it lacked a certain force”.
“Oh! ” the nightingale confessed.
Greatly flattered and impressed
That a critic of such note
Had discussed her art and throat:
“I don’t think the song’s divine.
But – oh, well – at least it’s mine”.
“That’s not much to boast about”.
Said the heartless frog. “Without
Proper training such as I
You’ll remain a mere beginner.
But with me you’ll be a winner”
“Dearest frog”, the nightingale
Breathed: “This is a fairy tale –
And you are Mozart in disguise
Come to earth before my eyes”.
“Well I charge a modest fee.”
“Oh! ” “But it won’t hurt, you’ll see”
Now the nightingale inspired,
Flushed with confidence, and fired
With both art and adoration,
Sang – and was a huge sensation.
Animals for miles around
Flocked towards the magic sound,
And the frog with great precision
Counted heads and charged admission.
Though next morning it was raining,
He began her vocal training.
“But I can’t sing in this weather”
“Come my dear – we’ll sing together.
Just put on your scarf and sash,
Koo-oh-ah! ko-ash! ko-ash! ”
So the frog and nightingale
Journeyed up and down the scale
For six hours, till she was shivering
and her voice was hoarse and quivering.
Though subdued and sleep deprived,
In the night her throat revived,
And the sumac tree was bowed,
With a breathless, titled crowd:
Owl of Sandwich, Duck of Kent,
Mallard and Milady Trent,
Martin Cardinal Mephisto,
And the Coot of Monte Cristo,
Ladies with tiaras glittering
In the interval sat twittering –
And the frog observed them glitter
With a joy both sweet and bitter.
Every day the frog who’d sold her
Songs for silver tried to scold her:
“You must practice even longer
Till your voice, like mine grows stronger.
In the second song last night
You got nervous in mid-flight.
And, my dear, lay on more trills:
Audiences enjoy such frills.
You must make your public happier:
Give them something sharper snappier.
We must aim for better billings.
You still owe me sixty shillings.”
Day by day the nightingale
Grew more sorrowful and pale.
Night on night her tired song
Zipped and trilled and bounced along,
Till the birds and beasts grew tired
At a voice so uninspired
And the ticket office gross
Crashed, and she grew more morose –
For her ears were now addicted
To applause quite unrestricted,
And to sing into the night
All alone gave no delight.
Now the frog puffed up with rage.
“Brainless bird – you’re on the stage –
Use your wits and follow fashion.
Puff your lungs out with your passion.”
Trembling, terrified to fail,
Blind with tears, the nightingale
Heard him out in silence, tried,
Puffed up, burst a vein, and died.
Said the frog: “I tried to teach her,
But she was a stupid creature –
Far too nervous, far too tense.
Far too prone to influence.
Well, poor bird – she should have known
That your song must be your own.
That’s why I sing with panache:
“Koo-oh-ah! ko-ash! ko-ash! ”
And the foghorn of the frog
Blared unrivalled through the bog.
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above –
Know that you aren’t alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above –
Know that you aren’t alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
Light now restricts itself
To the top half of trees;
The angled sun
Slants honey-coloured rays
That lessen to the ground
As we bike through
The corridor of Palm Drive
We two
Have reached a safety the years
Can claim to have created:
Unconsumated, therefore
Unjaded, unsated.
Picnic, movie, ice-cream;
Talk; to clear my head
Hot buttered rum – coffee for you;
And so not to bed
And so we have set the question
Aside, gently.
Were we to become lovers
Where would our best friends be?
You do not wish, nor I
To risk again
This savoured light for noon’s
High joy or pain.
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महोत्तरी एक्ष्प्रेस्स , देशको नेपाली भाषा दैनिक, नेपालको पहिलो निजी सञ्चालित नेपाल ब्रोडसिटको रूपमा २०७९ सालमा सुरु भएको थियो। द पोष्ट नेपालमा दोस्रो सबैभन्दा व्यापक समाचार हो। यसको स्थापना पछि, पोस्टले विश्वसनीयता, सत्यता, र ताजा समाचारहरूको लागि प्रतिष्ठा खेती गरेको छ। द Mahottari Express पोस्टको राजनीतिक, व्यापार, खेलकुद, र कला र संस्कृति रिपोर्टिङ केही नेपालका, र व्यापक विश्वका प्रमुख बुद्धिजीवीहरू र विश्लेषकहरूको रायको साथ पूरक छ। 2079 देखि, Mahottari Express ले नवीनतम समाचार दृश्यहरू उत्पादन गर्दै आएको छ पछिल्लो समय पोष्टले भ्रष्टाचार, दुर्व्यवहार र यौन दुव्र्यवहारका विषयमा अनुसन्धान थालेको छ । 66113 भन्दा बढी पाठकहरूको अनुमानित दैनिक पाठकहरूको साथ, o पोष्टले नेपालमा नेपाली कथाहरू स्थानीय र अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय दर्शकहरूलाई सुनाउन नयाँ भाषाको विकास गरेको छ। पोष्ट नैतिक पत्रकारिताप्रति प्रतिबद्ध छ जसले तथ्य र सत्यलाई विशेषाधिकार दिन्छ। यो पोस्ट काठमाडौं र जनकपुरबाट एकैसाथ प्रकाशित हुन्छ ।
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