A Prison Evening
Each star a rung,
night comes down the spiral
staircase of the evening.
The breeze passes by so very close
as if someone just happened to speak of love.
In the courtyard,
the trees are absorbed refugees
embroidering maps of return on the sky.
On the roof,
the moon - lovingly, generously –
is turning the stars
into a dust of sheen.
From every corner, dark-green shadows,
in ripples, come
towards me.
At any moment they may break over me,
like the waves of pain each time I remember
this separation from my lover.
This thought keeps consoling me:
though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed
in rooms where lovers are destined to meet,
they cannot snuff out
the moon, so today,
nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed,
no poison of torture make me bitter,
if just one evening in prison
can be so strangely sweet,
if just one moment anywhere on this earth.
Translation by: Agha Shahid Ali
About the poet:
FAIZ AHMED FAIZ 1911-1984
Poet, writer, journalist and politician who helped to forge
a revolutionary consciousness in the South Asian sub-continent
Faiz’s poems and writings, even
today, represent an unflinching resistance to oppression and imperialism. Like
Nazim Hikmat, Kazi Nazrurul Islam, Pablo Neruda and Mahmoud Darwish, Faiz’s
poetry transcends geographical boundaries; and is timeless.
Faiz was a renowned Urdu poet from Pakistan. Faiz was born
in British India in a small Punjabi village of Kala Kadar near Sialkot. Faiz
was educated initially in a mosque school and then in Scott and Murray Mission
school in Sialkot and he subsequently went to Lahore to undertake graduation in
English literature and a master in Arabic language. His masterly of four
languages (Arabic, English, Persian and Urdu) enabled him to beautifully craft
his poetry in coming years.
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