House By Stanley Plumly In Hindi/Urdu Translation Poem by Ravi Kopra

Ghar

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: aur kya faida ye kehnay ka
waalid sahibs apni museebatoN ko
khud paida kartay hain,
aur kya faida is se gham-geen honay ka,
jab vo wahaaaN akela chup chaap khaDa hua hai
aur apnay aap main hee gaaeb ho raha hai.

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House
Stanley Plumly

Door frames off the square, the inside
sweating tile-brick walls uncovered,
the checkerboard linoleum floors tilted
toward infinity or at least in the direction
of my northern bedroom window, which
in winter is half-frozen with ice thick
enough some mornings to draw on
with a fingernail, while in the dust of
summer the heat though everywhere
fills up the sunburned space with what
my sister calls the angels, who live also
in the attic, no less famous for its stars
and star-like rain that sometimes slips
on through the ceiling into the shy air.
A man standing before his children with
nothing in his hands, the angst coming
down like air the weight of gravity through
the whole length of his body, a lifetime
of falling and slow settling like night fog
or soft rain, as if there were a lake inside
him and above that the cloud-float of
a mind, until a day, like now, the water
rises to the limits of its form: and
it does no good to say that fathers are
the fathers of their own misery, it does
no good to take it all to heart, when
all he is doing is standing there, alone,
in silence, disappearing into himself.