Written For Narendar (3) Poem by Muhammad Shanazar

My this poem is not a panegyric,
Might be it, you do not like,
It is not that I wrote not panegyrics,
When I wrote,
I wrote them on the pages of open wind,
In the name of swaying grey evening,
In the name of fluttering lamps at stormy nights,
In the name of virgin sunlight
Scattered on the mountainous peaks,
I mentioned there Nanak, Kabeer and Baba Farid,
Bullah Shah and the Heer of Waris Shah,
And destiny of the helpless appalled human beings
Who have been being buried
In the dark caves of history since centuries.

It might be that you find my couplets very strange,
Like a half-naked madman lost in the city,
You might find my words,
Rough, informal and meaningless,
Because they got their origin
From the womb those trenches
Where rough sounds of the vendors
Rising and sinking sounds of the tea-sellers
At the stations, noise of numerous
Vehicles running on the roads, crying of
An old woman wrapped in dust and smoke,
Helplessness of oxen trudging a stuck cart
Through mud at some distant village,
Or hue and cry of silent Time
Absorbing in the dark recesses of mind,
Singeing sunlight of May have been creating
Gigantic but horrifying statutes of imagination.
You may find my poem very strange because
Where you now dwell, you are beyond
The access of these words, these sounds,
These senses and imagination.

You are now a resident of the pleasure palace,
From the arches of which you see pygmy
Even the giant towers, the moon etched
In the round laces spreads a mysterious mesh
Of beams on your resting place at night,
And you get yourself drowned into velvety sounds
Of Mehdi Hassan rousing from musical system,
And you do not see the universe and listen to
Its rough sounds, its lamentations, hue and cry
Of the protests, depression, helplessness,
And feebleness which originate my imagination,
Each day and each night.

Written by Jagdish Prakash
Translated by Muhammad Shanazar