My Destiny Poem by Muhammad Shanazar

I see standing on the shore of an ocean,
Mellifluous quavering shades of twilight
On the torso of never-ending waves,
I go on seeing unless the milieu becomes the portion of my existence.

I go on thinking,
What is the ocean?
What is twilight?
What is this wind?
What are these surging waves?
What is the wet sand?
In the same style thinking itself is a miracle of my mind.
Who am I?
What is this all?
I am a lump of earth that is breathing,
And drinking life drop by drop like water of the pipe,
Sitting on the bench of breath mending tattered costume,
I am an existence
But there is some else body in it,
I am an urge wobbling in the mind,
The same urge that is watching at all doors of baradari of the body,
That flows into my efforts, my struggles
My senses and my words.

There is an ocean in front of me
On the waves of which an outworn vessel is going on slipping on the dancing waves;
Where slipping to, no one knows.
Among billions of stars in the sky,
It might be an isolated star that is mine.

I see a sea in the surge but no seashore,
My house? Which one?
Where and at which milestone I shall have to take rest?
Holding whose arm I shall have to move ahead?
I know well who blesses a golden sail to my yacht of embellishing fortitude in a golden dome of wishes.
Fortitude which is sculptured afresh by sculptors of wishes,
Imparted teachings of traditions replete with arguments,
And then this fortitude:
The chief of my wishes
Handing over a scroll of my actions,
Entrusting me a large sword of new resolution, says to me holding my arm, “Go ahead.”
These flocks of my actions are leading me to those routes which have been laid by my own fortitude.

These were some actions and fortitude which were incarnated into a few humans like me:
Moses and Luqman, Socrates and Aristotle,
One Genghis khan and the other Halku
One Buddha, the other Ram and some guardians of faith,
One Ashoka, the other one Akbar,
Because they for self-made wishes settled themselves the angle of actions,
Settled themselves signs of their own destinations,
And then they got access to their stars,
Their fortitude and actions became their destinies.

I standing on the shore wrapping myself in a shawl,
Pray for such fortitude as it should emerge from the dome of wishes,
And some actions as they should become my destiny,
The destiny that should teach me soaring like a small bird in the sky.


Written by Jagdish Prakash
Translated by Muhammad Shanazar