The harmony that was in you, and was in me, perhaps you remember it, or not
That to which we were to be faithful, perhaps you remember it, or not

Those overtures in general, those hands of kindness over mine,
Everything I remember, a little - perhaps you remember too, or not

Once there was desire in you and me, just as once there was a road between us
Once we were completely lost in each other - perhaps you remember this, or not?


Translated, approximately, from the Urdu

Watch Nayyara Noor's searing performance of this famous ghazal


Translations

"......No longer the
core of each other’s waking
(or sleeping) hours." ~ from here

... and so the days are given to a travelogue
of insignificances - that they were born,
that they lived in that house once, loved
and were on occasion loved back - none
of this a cause for a tragedy - barely
a squeak under the great whirling wheel
of time (or as revolutionaries would
have it, Historical Imperative) - yet

how would it be, if the arts of memory
were denied to them? And they couldn't mourn
those faces that must have changed, or all
those completely forgotten? Or even worse
stay up late in the nights, not able to hear
loved voices, in the far distance, singing
softly, what appear to be dirges or lullabies?


My Poems

These past few lovely summer days, Africa on my mind: first there was Salif Keita's dazzle in a Brooklyn dusk, and last evening, Orchestra Baobab's Senegalese spin on Cuban rumba, by the shores of Hudson River.

And to complement such musical feasting, two writers, previously one known and one not, inflaming an old scabby hunger (grown passive with time etc) for literature: this past week witnessed consumption of two novels from the roof of the world, Halldór Laxness's "The Fish Can Sing" (from Icelandic) and Knut Hamsun's brilliant "Growth of the Soil" (from Norwegian)


My Daily Notes