Pash, the Punjabi Revolutionary Poet :Six Poems

                                        Remembering Pash 

                                         (8 September 1950 - 23 March 1988)

 

 

 

 

Here are six poems of Pash the revolutionary Punjabi poet, out of my translations of his poetry, Pash: A Poet of Impossible Dreams. These poems show a somewhat different Pash, not the fiery, boiling Pash, but no less passionate and intense. For some of his other revolutionary poems the reader may go to my two earlier blog posts (under Punjabi Poetry) on Pash.

        1.   A THORN PRICK  
     (To a man whose birth no calendar commemorates)

He lived long

Hoping his name would shine

The earth was very big

And his village so small

All his life he slept in the same hut

All his life he defecated in the same field

And kept on hoping

His name would shine

All his life he heard only three sounds:

The crowing of the rooster

The huffing and puffing of his cattle

And the chomp of his own jaws while he ate.

He never heard the sound of the sun  

Setting on the silky sand dunes

He never heard the sound of flower buds

Opening in spring

The stars never sang a song for him

All his lifetime he knew only three colours:

One the colour of the earth

Which he never knew how to name

Other the colour of the sky

Which had so many names

None of which he could remember

And the third of his wife’s cheeks

Which he never named out of shyness

He could compete against anyone in eating moolis

He won many a bet on eating the corn on cobs

But he himself was eaten away without any wager.

His years, like ripe melons, were swallowed whole

And his fresh milk temper

Was drunk with great relish

He never came to know how

Health-giving he was!

And the desire that his name should shine

Chased him like a bee.

He mutated into his own statue

But no one ever celebrated this.

The pathway from his home to the well

Is frequented even today

But in his footmarks

Buried under innumerable footprints

There yet smiles a wound

A wound inflicted by a thorn

Yet smiles there.

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      2.      I TAKE LEAVE NOW 

I take leave of you now

My friend, I take leave of you now

I had wished to write a poem

That you could read on for a lifetime

In that poem

I would have talked of the fragrance of coriander leaves

Of the sugar cane fields rustling in the wind

Of the blazing splendour of the mustard stalks

In that poem

I would have talked of mists melting on trees

Of the white foam singing on milk

Fresh from the buffalo’s teats.

And everything else I saw in your body

Would have been there too!

In that poem

My horny palms would have smiled

My thigh muscles rippled like fish in water

And flames of warmth risen

From the soft hair on my chest

That poem, my friend, would have held many things

For you

For me

For all the relationships in life, my friend,

But it is so unpleasant

To deal with life’s perplexities!

And even if I had been able to write

That auspicious poem
It would have died its own death

Leaving both of us in tears.

Poetry, my friend, has become powerless

While the weapons of warfare have grown

Very long claws, and before writing any poem

We must wage a war against them.

In war

Everything can be very simple

Like writing one’s own name, or the enemy’s

And in this state,

To compare my lips, rounded for kissing,

With the shape of the earth

Or to compare the movement of your waist

With the heaving of the sea

Would have been a poor joke.

So I did nothing of the kind

It was not possible for me to put together

You

Your wish to play with our children in my courtyard

And the reality of war

So I take leave of you

My friend, we shall remember

How the village sand dunes,

Burning during the day like the blacksmith’s furnace,

Became, at night, fragrant like flowers.

And to lie down on a haystack suffused with moonlight

And belittle Paradise was truly musical.

Yes, we shall have to remember all this

Because when the heart’s pockets are empty

Reliving the past is very heart-warming.

In this hour of farewell

I wish to thank all the lovely things

That stood above us like a canopy

And those nondescript places

That became beautiful because we met there.

I thank the wind, soft and musical like your voice,

That stood by me and brightened the moments I spent

Waiting for you

I thank the silky soft grass,

Growing along the water channels,

That unrolled itself under your feet as you walked

And the cotton puffs that came out

Of their bolls and willingly spread themselves

To become a bed for us to lie on

And the piddas that sat on the sugarcane stalks

To keep a watchful eye on passers-by

And the full-grown wheat stalks

That hid us while we lay down

I thank the tiny mustard flowers

That gave me the chance to pluck

The yellow pollen from your hair

I am a human being,

Have become one by assembling things bit by bit

And thank all the things

That saved me from disintegrating -

I have a lot to thank them for.

To love is very simple

Like readying oneself for a fight

In the face of tyranny

Or like imagining, while in hiding,

The day on which the bullet wound would heal.

To love

And to be able to fight

That’s how you honour life, my friend!

To fill the earth like sunshine 

Then to take someone in your embrace

To explode like dynamite

And resound in all directions -

This is the way to live

Those who have become traders

Can never know how to live and love.

To understand how bodies relate –

To draw no line between happiness and hatred

To overwhelm with love the vastness of life 

To meet after piercing the line of fear

And then to say goodbye

Is an act of great heroism, my friend

So I take leave of you now.

You should forget

How I nurtured your youth

Carrying you within my eyelids

How my eyes did everything

To chisel your features into this shape

How my kisses made your face so beautiful

And how my embraces cast into this mould

Your waxen body.

You should forget all this, my friend

Except 

That I had an infinite longing to live

That I wished to drown myself in life up to the neck.

My friend, live all that I missed

Live all that I missed.

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      3.      WHAT MIRZA SAID TO SAHIBAN 

We have heard

Your eyes too cannot stand the touch of collyrium

And the comb is scared to caress your hair.

We have also heard that my murder has been plotted

In the pages of history

But perhaps

Now the events may not follow the same course.

It is possible, before I abduct you,

Bread may carry me away

And I may be cut down, not under the jhand tree,

But under a chair, wide awake.

It is possible nothing like the old may happen this time

I have heard the plot to murder me

Had been hatched in the capital

Long before I was born

And Pilu the poet

Commissioned by the university.

He may call my murder a something insignificant

And keep churning out for centuries

Verses made-to-order

And nothing like the old may happen this time.

Now I have only paper arrows

And I can shoot only one in five years

And those who are hit

Call not for a drink of water but my blood.

My forefathers laboured

Only to fill the bellies of rulers,

Who, you know, are tigers,

Not Bakki, who could have carried us to Danabad.

Times are such: this time you won’t betray me

And I shall be done to death

Even in the presence of my brothers.

That’s why I say,

Nothing like the old may happen this time.

Although, we have heard

Your eyes too cannot stand the touch of collyrium

And the comb is scared to touch your hair.

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Notes

Collyrium: Sahiban was said to have been extremely beautiful. This is how Pilu the poet who composed the story describes her beauty at one place: ‘As she stepped out with a lungi tied round her waist, the nine angels died on seeing her beauty and God started counting his last breath.’ In this poem the poet talks of his own beloved as if she were Sahiban, and he himself Mirza, and imagines how the legendary tragic love story would be reenacted in their case but differently.

Danabad: The village near the present day Faisalabad in Pakistan where Mirza lived.

 

      4.      FACE TO FACE WITH THE PRESENT 

These days I am scared of newspapers

They must have published somewhere the news

That nothing happened today.

You may not know, or you may

How terrifying it is for nothing to happen

For the eyes to become breathless

And for things to stay still, like a frigid woman.

These days, even the conversation at the village gatherings

Looks as if a tree, longing to rock and swing,

Were caught in the coils of a python gone to sleep.

I wonder how this world,

Seeming forlorn like empty chairs, views us?

Centuries have gone past, and even today

Bread, toil and crematoriums might still think

We live only for them.

I’m at a loss – how should I convince

These shy mornings

These nights and beautiful twilights

We haven’t come here to be saluted by them!

Where is that someone, like us,

Whom we can take into our embrace

With open arms? 

These days the events, when they happen,

Are like the old man gone breathless

Climbing the stairs to a brothel.

Why something like the first meeting of lovers

Does not happen here?

How long shall this country

Founded by Mahatmas

Let itself be chased by a one-horned grave!  

After all, when shall we, exiled from the din of living,

Return to our homes that are alive

With things that happen

And when shall we sit around the fire

And listen to her overweening tales?

One day surely we shall imprint our kisses

On the cheeks of a season

And the whole earth

Shall turn into a wondrous newspaper

That will publish news after news

Of things happening.

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      5.      IT IS SO STRANGE  

Had you not married

You would still be labouring under the illusion

That flowers alone signify life’s colours

And not the smell of ash from burnt out fires.

Love for you would have been the name of a season.

You might have thought

The words embroidered with your crochet

Would speak out one day

Or the wings of the duck you had crafted

By sewing buttons together

Would not sully in turbid waters.

You would never have known that consummation

Is nothing more than a quietly burning pyre

Of your anklets gone dumb

In the noise of pots and pans given in dowry

Or, it is the dissolution of colours

In the heat of relationships.

The now married Surinder Kaur cannot recall

The once maidenly Chhindo,

Waiting for things to happen

Such is the wall erected by time’s mishaps.

In truth consummation is a never attained understanding -

How a village slowly changes into Danabad…

It is in truth your longings

Melting into cots, chairs, brooms…

It is strange one should let henna’s transient colours mock

The dreams long nurtured on one’s palms

Or weave into one’s breath

The deafening silence of the desolate fairground

After the crowds have dispersed

Or think of the repeatedly frequented footpaths

Long buried under the ploughed fields.

And now that the duck crafted by her is drowned on this end

Chhindo still waits for something to happen

Across the insurmountable wall of shadows

Cast by time.

It is strange that I who am nothing to you

On this or that side of the wall

Still carry the ducks that are dead and dying.

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      6.      THE MOST DANGEROUS   

To be robbed of one’s labour is not most dangerous

Body-bashing by the police is not most dangerous

Betrayal born of greed is not most dangerous

To be caught napping is bad

To be framed in silence out of fear is bad

But not most dangerous

To be over-awed in the din of deceit

Even when one is right is bad

To read in the light of a glowworm is bad

But not most dangerous

Most dangerous it is

To be full with dead peace

To be empty of passion,

To stomach everything

To go out to work daily

And come back

Most dangerous it is

For our dreams to die

Most dangerous is the watch

Ticking on your wrist

But stock still in your eyes

Most dangerous is the eye

That sees all and yet is icy cold

That forgets to kiss the world with love

That falls for the blinding steam rising out of things  

That, enamoured of the commonplace,

Is lost in the meaningless routine of life

Most dangerous is the moon

That rises, after each massacre,

In dumbstruck courtyards

But does not burn your eyes

Like chilli powder

Most dangerous is the song

That refuses to grieve 

Over the unploughed fields of the terrorized

That sounds like the scoundrel’s sly cough

Most dangerous is the night

That envelops the skies above the living souls

Wherein owls hoot and jackals howl

Where darkness clings for ever to the closed doors

Most dangerous is the direction

In which the sun of your inner self sets

And a splinter from that dead sunshine

Enters the east of your body

To be robbed of one’s labour is not most dangerous

Body-bashing by the police is not most dangerous

Betrayal born of greed is not most dangerous.

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