ब्रोकेंन एंड स्कैटर्ड

टूटी हुई, बिखरी हुई
In English
-
Broken and scattered, tea leaves
Crushed under feet
- My poetry
Hair, coarse with dirt, fallen, yet
Clinging to the neck

- Such my skin
as though detached
from me,
blended with clay

Standing in the light and shade of the
Afternoon, are trolleys of waiting,
Like my ribs …
Empty sacks are being darned with bodkins
Which bear the desolation of my eyes.

Even the chill carries a smile
Who is my friend

The pigeons hummed a ghazal
I could not catch
the radeef - qafias
So smooth, so soft, so sweet
Was their pain

The sand of Ganga is oscillating in the sky
Like a mirror
In which I am sleeping like mud
And I am shining
Somewhere
… Don’t know where

My flute is a rudder
Whose notes are dampened
“Chhup Chhup Chhup” my heart beats …
Chhup Chhup Chhup

He has been born who would embellish my
death
I have opened that shop, in which
Medicines
Labeled ‘poison’ laugh
There is so much love in the twitches
Of their injections

She is laughing at me who stands on
My lips on one sole
But her hair are pressed under my back
Scratching me like thin wires

A clear reflection of her kiss has crushed
My face with the stamp of her soles
Her bosom has grinded me even

Lay me down on the mountains of desire
Where I am writhing like a cascade
Let me burn in the rays of the sun
So that it its glaze and in its flames
You may dance

Let me drip like dew from wild flowers
So you may drench the dozy
Burning of your eyelids
With its pacified smell, If possible

You talk to me like the shy hinges of my
Door … keep asking
Questions
From the numberless rooms of my heart

Yes, you love me like fish love the waves
… in which they don’t come for being
Trapped
Like breezes do to my bosom
Which they cannot compress deep enough.
You love me as I love you.

Mirrors! Dissolve in the dark and write me
And read me on the sky
Mirrors! Smile and kill me
Mirrors! I am your life

A flower, putting on the laughter of dawn
Removing the rough, brown blanket of night
Coiled around me

It had no thorns
- Only one very black
Very long tress of hair
Shadowing till ground … where my feet
Had disappeared

That flower, chewing pearls, dissolving
Stars in its squints, showered upon me
Like a living perfume case

And then I saw that I am merely a breath
Mingled in its drops
Which must be choking your bosom
In your dreams, must be throbbing badly
Like a splinter

I could not become a salute at her feet
By the time I bowed
The direction of her feet
Had disappeared taking my eyes along

When you met me, you found
A torn and opened envelope
You turned it over and over – there was
Nothing in it
You threw it away – only then the fallen me
Could make you realize that it was me
You even bent down once to pick it up, but then left
It there
Thinking something.
I had met you even thus.

You proved that my memory was guilty –
And you charged
Exaggerated interest on that.
And then I said – in the next birth. I smiled
The way
Sad mountains
Sinking in the evening waters smile.

You appreciated my poetry very much, I
Thought
You were telling your own tale. You
Appreciated
my poetry very much.
An aroma dwells upon my eyelids like
A suggestion, as though it was the tiny
Spelling of your name –
A small, lovely, tilted spelling

Ah! That tip of the grass blade
That remained glued to your teeth
In that picnic
Pierces my sleep even this day

If I were jealous of anyone, I would have
Taken rebirths every hour – again and again
But as if I am immortal with this body itself
Because of you

A number of arrows, a number of boats, a
Number of
Feathers came here – flying, floating and
Passed away
They bore me – all of them
You thought you were in them
No, no, no.

There was no one in them
Only the doleful glitters of
Bygone catastrophes and happenings
were there.
Merely.
---------------
Shamsher Bahadur Singh
1954
Translated by Ashok Pande
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