Poems that I loved
some poems/lines that, in my opinion, have mastered the use of language and that have stayed with me long after reading them:
Muneer Niyazi 1
Aj da din vii ainvein e langyaa
koii vii kaam naa hoya
purab valooN chaRRya suraj
paschaam vaang khaloyaa
naa milyaa mai halqat nuuN
naa mai yaad khuda nuu kitaa
naa mai paRii namaaz
te naa mai jaam sharaab daa piitaa
khushi naa gham koii kol naa aayaa
naa hasyaa naa royaa
aj da din vii ainvein e langyaa
kal dekha aik aadmi atta safar ki dhool mein
gum thaa apny aap mein jaisy khusbhu phool mein
W.H Auden’s
Musée des Beaux Arts2
in Brueghel’s Icarus3, for instance: how everything turns away
quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
have heard the splash, the foresaken cry
but for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
as it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
water; and the delicate expensive ship that must have seen
something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
in memory of W.B. Yeats 4
now he is scattered among a hundred cities
and wholly given over to unfamiliar affections
to find his happiness in another kind of wood
and be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
the words of a dead man
are modified in the guts of the living.
William Carlos William
The Red Wheelbarrow5
Charles Tomilson’s Farewell to Van Gogh
Farwell, and for your instructive frenzy
gratitude. the world doesn’t end tonight
and the fruit that we shall pick tomorrow
await us, weighing the unstripped bough.
भूपी शेरचन
चिसो एष्ट्रे
यहाँ जो आउँछन्
मुटुभरि आगो, ओठभरि ज्वाला बोकेर आँउछन्
यहाँ जो बस्छन्
हत्केलाभरि खरानी र आँखाभरि धूवाँ बोकेर बस्छन्
र यहाँबाट जो जान्छन्
पोल्टाभरि निभेका विश्वासहरू र ठुटा सपनाहरू सोहोरेर जान्छन्
यस्तो छ यो चार भन्ज्याङ खाल्टो
एउटा चिसो एष्ट्रेजस्तो छ
यो चार भन्ज्याङ खाल्टो ।
DH Lawrence’s Piano
the glamour of childish days is upon me,
My manhodd is cast down
in the flood of remembrance,
i weep like a child for the past.
Emily Dickinson
i am nobody! Who are you?
are you––nobody––too?
then there is a pair of us!
don’t tell; they would advertise us –– you know!
how dreary –– to be –– Somebody!
how public –– like a frog ––
to tell your name –– the living june ––
to an admiring bog!
“hope” is the thing with feathers ——
that perches in the soul ——
and sings the tune without the words ——
and never stops —— at all ——
…
i’ve heard it in the chilliest land ——
and on the strangest sea ——
yet —— never —— in Extremity——
it asked a crumb —— of me.
William Wordsworth
for oft, when on my couch i lie
in vacant or in pensive mood
they flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude;
and then my heart with pleasure fills
and dances with daffodils.
a slumber did my spirit seal,
i had no human fears:
she seemed a thing that couldn’t feel
the touch of earthly years.
no motion has see now
she neither hears nor sees
rolled round in earth’s diurnal course
with rocks, and stones, and trees.
William Butler Yeats
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
RUMI
ME ME MEEE
to be updated
Footnotes
https://www.rekhta.org/poets/muneer-niyazi/all↩︎
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159364/musee-des-beaux-arts-63a1efde036cd↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder↩︎
https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats↩︎
https://josiehowattcommonplace.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/redwheel.jpg↩︎