Thank you Poorvi for your (very late night) feedback.

The problem I realised now is that the placement of the verses on the page has been destoryed because of the lack of formatting in plain text!

While I generally don't do fancy stuff with how lines appear on a page, mainly because I think poetry is vocal than visual, those lines were written to be somewhat visual as well. Perhaps I will try to do something about the formatting later!

As an aside (or gossip) today I ate lunch with a poet(Thomas Lux) with whom I am friends, and we talked about Ms Vizrani and her sucide/murder. She along with Komunyakaa were slated to come to Emory University, whose portals I occasionaly haunt, to teach poetry this fall. However it appears that this not going to happen. So in a perhaps more personal(or selfish?) level, I would miss meeting these two poets down in Georgia.

Joy! Sashi

I liked these, the last one most of all.

The first one got my attention in the beginning, wondering what you would say, and liking what you did say. "blue infinities" works well for me.

The idea of being "unlanguaged" in the second is intriguing, the form nice with even lines being shorter than odd ones (I noticed this detail after noticing that the sound worked; then I examined why). The change to lover walking under trees from birds is a bit surprising, and a little risky if the reader tries to examine relationships, though I think largely it works and the last four lines there are very well constructed, with very nice imagery (Snow-armored trees - though I'm not sure "sparse" makes sense there).

The last one works very well for me, in both form and meaning. I liked "puny fires" very much.

One thing about the first verse is that the uneven line breaks are distracting. In the second verse, putting "of" in line 3 to line 4 would make the rhythm of line 4 seem more like that of line 2.

I liked the Gulzar piece very much, though can't recall the original Hindustani. I'll say more about that in another post on another day - should really get some sleep now so I can pack some more tomorrow.

Poorvi

Tres Bien! Thine translation is very good, Poorvi! Yes the length issue has to be worked out. Stephen Dybons, who was poet in residence here(Georgia Tech), was found of saying "poetry is the right word in the right place". I try to follow his dictum and often fail. Your sucess rate is higher I must say in keeping closer to the orginal.

I liked the way you managed to solve that puzzle of "namaaz" bit, even if the refrence is culture specific. I think since I was reworking this ghazal to give to a "non native", I felt it would be better to excise that out. Also since I like some kind of continuity between the lines of a couplet and the blood and the tears seem to be unlinked to the "namaz" line, I reworked the orginal there into something else.

I am working on "Dacca..." and will post it when it passes my lax poetic standards!

I second Zarqa's idea of a blog. While the commoners may not consistently produce, publish-worthy work, I think some (if not all) of these discussions and ideas can be useful as a cross cut of the creative processes. I personally have decided to store these post I make in an archive and use them later.

joy! Sashi

If there is no destination in sight, its search will do If meeting is impossible, its desire will do

No blood gathered in the body, nor tears in the eyes, The desired namaaz is necessary, an unwashed worshipper will do

It is enough that the garment of my heart is intact Its undarned, torn, collars will do

This party should take off, wine lovers, If there is no goblet and wine, false merriment will do

If the wait is difficult, then meanwhile, O heart, Discussions with her promises of the future will do

If in a foreign land there be none one's own Then, Faiz, the mention of your land will do

The extra couplet I discovered in my collection of Faiz is: yahi bahut hai kah saalim hai dil kaa pairaahan ye chaak-chaak garebaan berafoo hii sahii

Sashi and others, if you do look at "Dhaka ..". you might want to look at Andy McCord's translation which has a couple of very good couplets. www.thebluemoon.com

I would sometime like to compare two translations of "hum dekhenge" - one very literal www.ece.utexas.edu and one very impressionist, of only one verse: www.punjabilok.com

Poorvi