Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
My poems have been moving, in recent years, towards an openness that retains measure yet finds its way across the page and through a reading in, I hope, surprising ways. How does the breath balance between long sentences and brief utterances – between polyphony and stutterance – between pause and choric exchange – between a clear melodic line and a scatter of attendant, sometimes insistent voices? And how might a line double back over itself to yield up several meanings teasing the reader – this is a device to which I’ve apprenticed myself, while translating the Urdu poetry of Mir Taqi Mir and Ghalib.
Maani-afirini, the play of an open-ended and teasingly ambiguous syntax, allows an adroitly crafted line in Urdu to mean several things and even to go, sometimes, in opposite directions, taking the whole of the poem with it. How might one hint at this in Angrezi? It strikes me that Angrez rhymes with, or at least assorts well beside, Rangrez. Lifting off from texture, the edging of one skein into another, the play of colour: the touching, blurring, the percussive meeting, the merging of colours. The work of the dyer’s hand:
Jaisi mori piya ki pagaria
us rang rang de
mohe
rang de rangrezva!
Imagine that the 18th-century Urdu poet Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’ (1723-1810) were alive today, and continuing to compose his sophisticated, kaleidoscopic, often irreverent poetry. Remember that, of Mir, even the great Ghalib – who recognised no equals, leave alone superiors – wrote: “Mir ke sher ka ahvaal kahun kya Ghalib/ jis ka divan kam az gulshan-e Kashmir nahin” (“Ghalib, what can I say about Mir’s poetry?/ His collected works rival a garden in Kashmir”). In his ghazals, collected into six vast volumes, Mir demonstrates that he is no respecter of conventional pieties. As he wanders through the forests of love and feels the full moon of passion bathing his body in its fire, he can laugh at religious teachers who turn away from the senses and the shared sociality of life, poke fun at Hazrat Khizr, the Green One, guardian of the waters of life and guide to lost travellers, and even disclaim his religious identity.
Taking a nonchalant liberty with the grave, mysterious Khizr, he writes: “Mila jo ishq ke jangal mein Khizr maine kaha/ ki khauf-e sher hai makhdoom yahan kidhar aayaa” (“Meeting Khizr, the Green One, the Guide, in love’s forest, I said:/ Lord, this place is swarming with tigers, have you lost your way?”) And in another poem, he goes so far as to say: “Mir ke deen-o-mazhab ko ab pucchte kya ho unne to/ qashqa kheencha dair mein baitha kab ka tark islam kiya” (“Don’t ask Mir about his religion, he’s drawn himself/ a tilak, gone to the temple, given up on Islam long ago”).
How would this stand up in an Indian TV studio today? “Mr Mir, Mr Mir, Mr Mir, Mr Mir, I am sorry, we have just 30 seconds before the break and I want a straight answer from you. Are you or are you not religious? Are you a Muslim or a Hindu? Or a heretic? The people of this great nation want to know, and they deserve an answer.”
As for me, arriving at his poetry nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, I can only echo what he himself wrote: “kin ne sun shi’r-e mīr yih nah kahā/ kahyo phir hā’e kyā kahā ṣāḥib.” In Angrezi: “No one who heard Mir’s poems wouldn’t say:/ Say it again, it’s to die for, say it again!”
← Ranjit Hoskote
1.
ʿālam kisū ḥakīm kā bāñdhā t̤ilism hai
kuchh ho to ětibār bhī ho kāʾināt kā
The world’s a spell cast by some mage:
if there was a there there, we’d believe in creation.
(Divan-e Chahārum IV.1314.9)
2.
kis kī masjid kaise maiḳhāne kahāñ ke shaiḳh-o-shāb
ek gardish meñ tirī chashm-e syah kī sab ḳharāb
Whose mosque, what kind of bar, what wise old guy and dude?
One round of your black eyes, and they’re all lying there, wasted.
(Divan-e Avval: I.178.1)
3.
āñkhoñ meñ apnī rāt ko ḳhūnāb thā so thā
jī dil ke iẓt̤irāb se be-tāb thā so thā
My eyes ran blood last night, they did, but hey, no big deal.
I’m all shook up from the heart’s mad beat, but hey, no big deal.
(Divan-e Suvvum: III.1103.1)
4.
badr sāñ ab āḳhir āḳhir chhā gaʾī mujh par yih āg
varnah pahle thā mirā jūñ māh-e nau dāman jalā
At last, at last, like the full moon, this fire has lit me up.
Like the new moon, it had barely singed the hem of my robe.
(Divan-e Avval: 1.15.3)
5.
ab koft se hijrāñ kī jahāñ tan pah rakhā hāth
jo dard-o-alam thā so kahe tū kih vahīñ thā
My body beaten to goldleaf by separation: wherever
you touched it, the pain would be there, or there, there.
(Divan-e Avval: I.2.4)
6.
rāt ḥairān hūñ kuchh chup hī mujhe lag gaʾī mīr
dard-e pinhāñ the bahut par lab-e iz̤hār nah thā
Last night – I’m still baffled – a silence overtook me, Mir:
the secret wounds were many, not one opened its mouth.
(Divan-e Avval: I.9.8)
7.
dil kī vīrānī kā kyā mażkūr hai
yih nagar sau martabah lūṭā gayā
Of the heart’s ruination, what report?
This city’s been looted a hundred times over.
(Divan-e Avval: I.52.4)
8.
dhūp meñ jaltī haiñ ġhurbat-vat̤anoñ kī lāsheñ
tere kūche meñ magar sāyah-e dīvār nah thā
The sun burns up the corpses of those driven from their homeland.
Your lane did not offer them even the shadow of a wall.
(Divan-e Avval: I.109.3)
9.
kar ḳhauf kalak-ḳhasp kī jo surḳh haiñ āñkheñ
jalte haiñ tar-o-ḳhhushk bhī miskīñ ke ġhaẓab meñ
Don’t ignore those who huddle around fires, their eyes red:
both wet and dry will be charred by the rage of the oppressed.
(Divan-e Panjum: V.1688.4)
10.
ham bhī is shahr meñ un logoñ se haiñ ḳhānah-ḳharāb
mīr ghar-bār jinhoñ ke rāh-e sailāb meñ haiñ
I, too, am one of those people in this city whose homes
have been trashed, Mir, whose everything lies in the flood’s path.
(Divan-e Suvvum III.1174.7)
11.
pal meñ jahāñ ko dekhte mere ḍubo chuka
ik vaqt meñ yih dīdah bhī t̤ūfān ro chuka
One blink, and I managed to drown the world.
There was a time these eyes could weep up a storm.
(Divan-e Avval: 1.100.1)
12.
kyā jānūñ log kahte haiñ kis ko surūr-e qalb
āyā nahīñ yih lafz̤ to hindī zabāñ ke bīch
How would I know what folks call the heart’s pleasance?
That fancy word hasn’t made its way into Hindi yet.
(Divan-e Chahārum: IV.1370. 5)
*
Translated from original Urdu by Ranjit Hoskote
← October 2019 Issue
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