Pash: Three poems

Here are three poems of the Punjabi revolutionary poet Pash (1950-88). First one  is a love poem; the second symbolizes people's resistance against state repression; and the third is a premonition of his own death. Pash was shot dead by Khalistani militants on 23 March 1988. The poems have been extracted from my translation of Pash's poetry: Pash: A Poet of Impossible Dreams.(2010)

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 in bloom.

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 exigency 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 revile Heaven 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 brush off

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 for a moment, 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 -

that 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.

[from:In Our Times (Saade Samian Vich)]
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GRASS    

I’m grass

I shall green-wash all your misdeeds.

You may bomb the university

reduce every hostel to a heap of rubble

raze all our jhuggis to the ground …

How will you deal with me?

I’m grass, and I shall cover everything,

rise from every heap.

You may flatten Banga,

decimate Sangrur,

pulverize Ludhiana into a heap of dust,  

my greenness will do its act.

And two or ten years hence

passengers will ask the bus conductor:

‘Where are we?

Drop us at Barnala,

where green grass grows thick like a jungle.’

I’m grass, I’ll do my act:

Green-wash all your misdeeds.

[from: Scattered Scripts(Khilre Howe Virke)]

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When  Revolt Rages  

When in the pitch dark nights

moments recoil

and stand in terror of each other

the light in the attics

jumps from the windows

and commits suicide

When revolt rages

in the womb of such peaceful nights

I can be done to death any time

in the broad daylight

in the thick of the night

[from: When Revolt Rages (Loh Katha)]

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