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
about suffering they were never wrong
the old masters: how well they understood
its human position; how it takes place
while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
how, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
for the mirculous birth, there always muste be
children who did not especially want it to happen, skating
on a pond at the edge of the wood:
they never forgot
that even the dreadfu; martyrdom must run its course
anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
scratch its innocent behind on a tree
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.
i always liked the third stanza of this poem the most. but lately my love for the first stanza has grown a lot– especially i have noticed how both of them are getting to the same crux. the first stanza talks about human suffering happening in one corner of this world while at somewhere distant, or even nearby, someone is simply going on with their life: brushing their teeth, strolling by a farmer’s market, etc. and this is visually demonstrated in the third stanza. the second stanza also hones on the same phenomenon: when a patriot is dying for his land, the torturer’s horse is simply scratching its back on a tree.
on the completely different – or not so – note, the poem also calls our attention to the varying facets of life that are happening left and right to us. if we call them into our awareness, maybe something in us slightly changes.
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
Easter, 1916
i have met them at close of day
coming with vivid faces
from counter or desk among grey
eighteen-century houses.
i have passed with a nod of the head
or polite meaningless words,
or have lingered awhile and said
polite meaningless words,
and thought before i had done
of a mocking tale or a gibe
to please a companion
around the fire at the club,
being certain that they and i
but lived where motley i worn:
all changed, chaged utterly:
a terrible beauty is born.
…
hearts with one purpose alone
through summer and winter seem
enchanted to a stone
to trouble the living stream.
the horse that comes from the road,
the rider, the birds that range
from cloud to tumbling cloud,
minute by minute they change;
a shadow of cloud on the stream
changes minute by minute;
a horse-hoof slides on the brim,
and a horse plashes within it;
the long-legged moor-hens dive,
and hens to moor-cocks call;
minute by minute they live
the stone’s in the midst of all.
too long a sacrific
can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
that is heaven’s part, our part
to murmur name upon name,
as a mother names her child
when sleep at last has come
on limbs that had run wild
what is it but nightfall?
no, no, not night but death;
was it needless death after all?
for england may keep faith
for all that is done and said.
we know thei dream; enough
to know they dreamed and are dead;
and what if excess of love
bewildered them till they died?
i write it out in a verse––
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Conolly and Pearse
now and in time to be,
wherever green is worn,
are changed, changed utterly;
a terrible beauty is born.**
No second troy
…
with beauty like a tightened-bow, a kind
that is not natural in an age like this,
being high and solitary and most stern?
why, what could she have, being what she is?
was there another troy to burn?
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
RUMI
don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. unfold your own myth.
sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
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↩︎