6 Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
#1
Victory is to return
alive after death
in one’s palms
the lines of martyrdom
I loiter in a lane
bloody with executions
shadowed
by prisons
The guillotine holds
the relics
of springtime
And I thank the executioner
for these blossoms of fire
my dream lit up
with galaxies
my eyes put out
#2
The rebels
and those who’ve ceased to rebel
They cry:
Give your desolation
some perfect name
I search for one word
to say
without you
roses are not scarlet
nor blood nor wine
Stained with ink
my shirts torn
I walk the street of memory
Desire tells me to knock
on your door
You ask
Who are you?
Both worlds lost
I go to the tavern
I praise the censor
He condemned
the cup-bearers
Now in my prayers
I ask only for wine
#3
Sometimes when you almost smile, his heart breaks,
O don’t ask, into what longing!
All night he wept. When dawn came, its collars ripped
by the sun, he’d lost both earth and eternity to you.
So brief: Life, this sensation of forgetting God.
Almighty God, Coward not to allow us more time on earth!
The world will somehow make him oblivious of you:
More enticing than you is the struggle to live.
The taverns are deserted, the glasses desolate: You left,
o thief, with springtime in your pocket.
My Visitors
The door of my sorrowing house opens against its will;
here come my visitors.
Here comes evening, to spread out before her
the carpet of nostalgia on all my streeis.
Here comes midnigiit, telling the story
of her broken heart to the moon and stars.
Here comes morning with her gleaming scalpel
to play with the wounds of memory.
Here comes noon,
whiplets of flame hidden in her sleeve.
Here come all my visitors, round the clock
they beat their way to my door.
But the heart and eye are not aware
of who comes, and when, or who leaves.
They are far away, on that journey
of the mind. galloping home,
hands holding tight to the ocean’s mane,
shoulders crushed under their burden
of fears and forbidden questions.
In Your Eyes and Mine
In your eyes end mine these thousand times of waiting
and, in your body and mine these thousands of murdered hearts.
In the listlessness of your fingers and mine
all the pens are mortally ill.
In every street of your city and mine
the ground down tombs of your fingers and mine.
All the stars of your midnight and mine
are riddled with wounds;
the flowers of your morning and mine
ripped to shreds.
-these desecrated stars, without balm-
-these torn flowers, and no solace-
Oil the stars; ashes of the moon.
On the flowers, blood of still wet dew.
Is all this really so?
Or is it the web spun by the spider called imagination?
If it is true, what can be done?
And if it is not true, what can be done?
Tell me. Tell me.
The Flowers Have Gone to Seed
All the flowers have gone to seed;
the sky cries down its unrelenting tears.
The lights cannot find their luster;
all the mirrors are broken to bits.
What music there was is played out and lost;
the ankle bells on feet that used to dance
are crushed to silence.
Far away, behind these clouds, the star of pain
advances and retreats.
Beloved of the night, it tinkles, it grins.
