Poems | Shiv Kumar Batalvi ( Translated by Sartaj Ghuman) | Part 2/2*

Photo : Lee La

ghazal

i am a sentence in a song incomplete
a journey of the footprints not made by any feet

of all the havoc that love has wreaked
of those ravages i am the peak


i am a lamp in your gathering that’s snuffed out
i am an allusion that from your lips leaked


that has death alone as its cure
i am the anxiety for such a life worth just a week


she, who saw me and looked away
i am the mute gaze of her eyes deep


my own face alone have I seen
what a strange man in this world I have been !


someone heard shiv say yesterday, sorrow’s
left me well known in this world bleak

Longing

people worship god
and i, your longing
it’s a hajj to a hundred meccas
oh your longing!
people say I have become the sun
people say i shine gloriously
what kind of a fire it lit me with,
oh your longing!

behind me is my shadow
in front of me, my darkness
my arm it mustn’t let go
oh your longing!

no soil of the body in it
nor garbage of the mind
i sifted it on a winnow
oh your longing!

whenever times of sorrow came
bringing pain and loneliness in tow
i called for it to come sit by my side
oh your longing!

it gets me to dye words sometimes
and sometimes makes me weave songs
a thousand crafts it’s taught me
oh your longing!

when pain fell at my feet
and swore by my perseverance
the whole world turned up to see
oh your longing!

through my passion i gained some standing
people came to congratulate me
and embracing me freely wept,
oh your longing!

i am a fool with no sign of sagacity
this the world told me
on a pedestal it’s put me today
oh your longing!

it’s a hajj to a hundred meccas
oh your longing!

*Thanks to TSC friend Taseer Gujral for her editorial suggestions

Poems | Shiv Kumar Batalvi ( Translated by Sartaj Ghuman) | Part 1/2

Photo : LeeLa

borrowed song

oh sweet lord
lend me another song or a half
my fire’s going out please
give me another spark

in my early years of infancy
i’ve laid all my hurt to waste
for the season of my youth now
please lend me more pain chaste

give me a song like my youth
dusky, mystically beguiling
like the red of the day at dawn
sets aglitter the whole tank
or like in a treeless land
at twilight the first star
in my land too it’s getting dark
give me another star or a half
or like the redness fiery
in the lake dissolve me
without a lover i can spend days long
but not, o lord, without a song
a lifetime anyone can squander
a fortunate few are fated pain
and lord, is every shore graced
by a doe sipping at the lake
drain away the untouched waters then
of my lake too unclaimed
or the songs that you got me to write
take those too back again

let me not extol beauty
that as an equal to fire doesn’t stand
and not praise the eye, o lord
whose tears are but bland
let me not sing songs that aren’t in pain steeped
or say words that aren’t fragrant scented sweet
if not fragrant my words happen to be
break them off the branch
or like my youth lend me
another song or a half

in my early years of infancy
i’ve laid all my hurt to waste
for the season of my youth now
please lend me more pain chaste

 







virtuous father dear

when the cotton does flower bear
o virtuous father dear!
buy me that season of the year
o virtuous father dear!
i lost a song in this season of yore
that of longing a garland wore
its face pockmarked with sorrow such
its eyes full of water from a ruined well
a song that when by the lips touched
sends the heart fluttering along
o virtuous father dear!
buy me that song
o virtuous father dear!

one day me and my song
in this season bewitched beguiling
the heart’s soil we ploughed
and dreams pure we sowed
with a million tears we irrigated it
no flower it bore however
o virtuous father dear
buy me just one flower
o virtuous father dear!

what use all your land
if daughters are to wither so
what use your mansarovar
if thirsty the swans go
to what end your scattered crumbs
against pearls weighed
o virtuous father dear!
if you can’t buy me that season of the year
o virtuous father dear
when cotton does flower bear
o virtuous father dear!

gazal

of dealing with sorrow, i’ve learnt the art

learnt to slowly cry and distract the heart

it’s best that you are someone else’s now

it's put an end to worries of making you mine somehow

oh you who breathe, but for this one fear i’d readily die

they sell for money even the land to light the pyre

my friends, lend me not these breaths

for i have not the courage to repay the debt

don’t try and drive shiv’s sorrow away

the treacherous rascal has a mind to cry today