Evolution.

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into light again.

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in the newer day
And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
In the hush of the moonless nights;
And oh! what beautiful years were there
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing side
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o'er the plain
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed
We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland lank
And fitted it, head and haft;
Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west to east to the crimson feast
The clan came tramping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl
We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tush was gone.

And that was a million years ago
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet --

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnished them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
And I know that I shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-bone men make war
And the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here
O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

- Langdon Smith

Dark Sonnet

I don’t think that I’ve been in love as such
although I liked a few folk pretty well
Love must be vaster than my smiles or touch
for brave men died and empires rose and fell
for love, girls follow boys to foreign lands
and men have followed women into hell
In plays and poems someone understands
there’s something makes us more than blood and bone
And more than biological demands
for me love’s like the wind unseen, unknown
I see the trees are bending where it’s been
I know that it leaves wreckage where it’s blown
I really don’t know what I love you means
I think it means don’t leave me here alone

- Neil Gaiman

Winter: My Secret.

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I;
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.

                                       - Christina Rossetti
                                          via Poets.org

On winter afternoons.

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
'Tis the Seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

                                E. Dickinson.

Old love.

For a very long time, the only poem of William Savage Landor that I knew was the one on Rose Aylmer's* tomb in Calcutta:

AH, what avails the sceptred race!
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.

Rose Aylmer's Tomb, Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta

Until I came across this:

You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,

By every word and smile deceived.

Another man would hope no more;

Nor hope I what I hoped before: 

But let not this last wish be vain;

Deceive, deceive me once again!

Which reminded me of this poem by Ahmed Faraz:

Ranjish hi sahi dil hi dukhane ke liye aa - Even if you bear a grudge, come at least to tease my heart
Aa phir se mujhe chhod ke jaane ke liye aa - Visit me once again, come, even if to depart

Kuchh to mere pindar-e-mohabbat ka bharam rakh - Respect a little the depth of my love for you
Tu bhi to kabhi mujhko manaane ke liye aa - You should also come someday to assuage my heart

Pehle se marasim na sahi phir bhi kabhi to - Though the relationship we had is over
Rasm-o-rah-e-duniya hi nibhane ke liye aa - Come to fulfill the rituals of the world

Kis kis ko batayenge judai ka sabab hum - Who all must I explain the reason for our separation
Tu mujhse khafa hai to zamane ke liye aa - Come, despite your displeasure, to continue the ceremony

Ek umr se hoon lazzat-e-girya se bhi mehroom - For long I have been denied even the luxury of tears
Aye raahat-e-jaan mujhko rulaane ke liye aa - O joy of my heart, come at least to make me weep

Ab tak dil-e-khushfeham ko tujh se hain umeedain - Even now this gullible heart has pinned its hopes on you
Ye aakhri shamein bhi bujhane ke liye aa - Come to blow out this last glimmering hope

The most famous version by Mehdi Hassan (though not completely faithful to the original poem*):

 

____________________________________________

* On Rose Aylmer, the British Social Life in India 1608-1937 states that she contorted "a most severe bowel complaint brought on entirely by indulging too much with that mischievous and dangerous fruit, the pineapple" and "at the end of a few days fell a martyr to the obstinacy of the malady" (and not cholera as is commonly believed). Maybe it's better to be unknown and forgotten than be remembered a hundred years later for having been a glutton. 

On another note, Rose Aylmer is also referenced in To Kill A Mockingbird: “Rose Aylmer was Uncle Jack’s cat”

** The last two couplets as sung by Mehdi Hasan are not by Ahmad Faraz. These were added later by Talib Baghbati

Suicide in the Trenches

I KNEW a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
. . . .
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon

Incorrigibly Plural.

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

- Louis Macneice

Rabb

Professor Mohan Singh was the first Punjabi poet that I was introduced to by my grandmother who brought home Saavey Pattar and spent many summer afternoons taking us through it. The poem below is one that she recited often but it didn't mean anything to my 8 year old self. It had completely slipped my mind until the other day when I remembered the first two lines out of the blue. And so I finally read it.

The complete poem is here.

ਰੱਬ
ਰੱਬ ਇੱਕ ਗੁੰਝਲਦਾਰ ਬੁਝਾਰਤ
ਰੱਬ ਇਕ ਗੋਰਖ-ਧੰਦਾ ।
ਖੋਲ੍ਹਣ ਲੱਗਿਆਂ ਪੇਚ ਏਸ ਦੇ
ਕਾਫ਼ਰ ਹੋ ਜਾਏ ਬੰਦਾ ।
ਕਾਫ਼ਰ ਹੋਣੋ ਡਰ ਕੇ ਜੀਵੇਂ
ਖੋਜੋਂ ਮੂਲ ਨਾ ਖੁੰਝੀ
ਲਾਈਲੱਗ ਮੋਮਨ ਦੇ ਕੋਲੋਂ
ਖੋਜੀ ਕਾਫ਼ਰ ਚੰਗਾ ।


Rabb
"Rabb ik gunjaldaar bujaarat - God's an entangled riddle
Rabb ik gorakh-dhanda - God's a labyrinth of complications
Kholan laggiyan pech eis dey -  Trying to understand God's workings
Kaafir ho jaaye banda. - Turns man into an unbeliever (kaafir).
Kaafir hono dar key jee vein - And so even though you live in the fear of becoming a kaafir
khojon mool naa khunji  - But don't ever give up on your questions
Laayilagg momin dey kolon - Rather than being a credulous believer
khoji kaafir changa." - It is better to be a questioning kaafir.

Tey jey tuhaanu samajh aa vi gayi, taan pher ki hoya, for as Bulleh Shah says:

“Gal samajh layee tey raolaa keeh ey,
Eyh Raam, Raheem tey Maula keeh ey.”

Work and Love and Life.

Sometimes the quarter of a century which is all of my life that I have lived thus far seems to have been so.

Woh log bahut khush qismat thay
Jo ishq ko kaam samajhtey thay
Ya kaam sey aashqui kartey thay
Hum jeetey jee masroof rahey
Kuchh ishq kiya kuchh kaam kiya
Kaam ishq key aarhey aata raha
Aur ishq sey kaam ulajhta raha
Phir aakhir tang aakar humney
Donon ko adhoora chhorh diya.

- Faiz

A translation (relying mostly on the translation provided in Shiv K. Kumar's The Best of Faiz):

Those people were fortunate
Who considered love as their business
or were in love with their work.
I remained busy all my life
There was some love, there was some work
Work came in the way of love,
and love impeded work
Then tired of it all,
I gave up on both half done. 

He will not come, and still I wait.

I read A Little Boy in the Morning many years ago, in a book called This is Not a Novel (by Jennifer Johnston) many years ago. I remember the book but vaguely, but the poem has stayed with me, taking on myriad meanings in different years and moods.

A Little Boy in the Morning

He will not come, and still I wait.
He whistles at another gate
Where angels listen. Ah I know
He will not come, yet if I go
How shall I know he did not pass
barefooted in the flowery grass?

The moon leans on one silver horn
Above the silhouettes of morn,
And from their nest-sills finches whistle
Or stooping pluck the downy thistle.
How is the morn so gay and fair
Without his whistling in its air?

The world is calling, I must go.
How shall I know he did not pass
Barefooted in the shining grass?

Francis Ledwidge

In Memoriam.

IN MEMORIAM: G.R.Y.T.

(Killed in action, April 23, 1917)

I spoke with you but seldom, yet there lay

Some nameless glamour in your written word,

And thoughts of you rose often - longings stirred

By dear remembrance of the sad blue-grey

That dwelt within your eyes, the even sway

Of your young god-like gait, the rarely heard

But frank bright laughter, hallowed by a Day

That made of Youth Right's offering to the sword.

So now I ponder, since your day is done,

Ere dawn was past, on all you meant to me,

And all the more you might have come to be,

And wonder if some state, beyond the sun

And shadows here, may yet some completion see

Of intimacy sweet though scarce begun.

- Vera Brittain

Poetry from the Eastern Front.

BEFORE ATTACK

When soldiers go to death they sing,
but just before it
                          one may cry.
In battle, the most fearful thing
is when you know you soon may die.
The snow's ploughed up with mortar shells
no longer white, but black with dust.
Whizz - goes one,
                      and a friend lies dead,
and I'm alive - death's hurtled past.
Next turn is mine -
                            so beastly near.
It's me they're aiming at, I know.
It's 41,
          the grimmest year
infantry frozen in the snow.
A magnet's what I seem to be
Attracting every shell that flies.
But once again death misses me -
a blast,
           and my lieutenant dies...
But now we've grown too tense to wait
And crouching, out of trenches get,
driven along by icy hate
that goads us like a bayonet.

It wasn't long, the skirmish.
                                  Then
we swilled cold vodkas, lashed by gales
and scraped the blood of other men,
unruffled,
               from beneath our nails.

- Semyon Gudzenko
   (1942)
  translated by Dorian Rottenberg
(from Immortality - Verse by Soviet Poets who laid down their lives in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945)


Another translation of the poem available here.

King's Circle buys - Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes

King's Circle, Mumbai, has provided me with some of my most random, most fun and most precious buys, one of which is this classic - "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes" that introduced me to the rhyme of Harry Graham.

Warning: The content is "cheerfully cruel".

I give you a few particularly pleasing ones:

The Stern Parent
Father heard his children scream
So he threw them in the stream

Saying, as he drowned the third,
"Children should be seen, not heard!"


Self-Sacrifice

FATHER, chancing to chastise
His indignant daughter Sue,
Said, "I hope you realize
That this hurts me more than you."

Susan straightway ceased to roar.

"If that's really true," said she,
"I can stand a good deal more;
Pray go on, and don't mind me."

Tender-Heartedness
BILLY, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.

The poet does warn in his preface that the book is not meant for kids under seventeen:

Harry Graham with niece - I guess he didn't really hate children. 

WITH guilty, conscience-stricken tears
I offer up these rhymes of mine
To children of maturer years
(From Seventeen to Ninety-nine).
A special solace may they be
In days of second infancy...

And

...Fond parent, you whose children are
Of tender age (from two to eight),
Pray keep this little volume far
From reach of such, and relegate
My verses to an upper shelf,--
Where you may study them yourself.

The Times editorial described his writing as that “enchanted world where there are no values, nor standards of conduct or feeling and where the plainest sense is the plainest nonsense” and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography compares his verse with that of W. S. Gilbert and suggests that his prose was an early influence on P. G. Wodehouse. (Source: Wikipedia). The eggs and b. author may certainly have picked up his habit of abbreviating a word or two from Mr. Graham:

Poetical Economy

What hours I spent of precious time,
What pints of ink I used to waste,
Attempting to secure a rhyme
To suit the public taste,
Until I found a simple plan
Which makes the lamest lyric scan!

When I’ve a syllable de trop,
I cut it off without apol.
This verbal sacrifice, I know,
May irritate the schol.
But all must praise my dev’lish cunn.
Who realize that time is mon.

My sense remains as clear as cryst.,
My style as pure as any duch.
Who does not boast a bar sinist.
Upon her fam. escutch.,
And I can treat with scornful pit.
The sneers of ev’ry captious crit.

I gladly publish to the pop.
A scheme of which I make no myst.,
And beg my fellow scribes to cop.
This labor-saving syst.
I offer it to the consid.
Of ev’ry thoughtful individ.

The author, working like a beav.,
His readers’ pleasure could redoub.,
Did he but now and then abbrev.
The works he gives his pub.,
Did Upton Sinc. or Edith Whart.
Curtail their output by a quart.

If Mr. Caine rewrote “The Scape.”,
And Miss Corell. condensed “Barabb.”,
What could they save in foolscap pape.
Did they but cultivate the hab.
Which teaches people to suppress
All syllables that are unnec.!

If playwrights would but thus dimin.
The length of time each drama takes
(“The Second Mrs. Tanq.” by Pin.
Or even “Ham.” by Shakes.),
We could maintain a wakeful att.
When at a mat. on Wed. or Sat.

Foll. my examp., O Maurice Hewl.
When next you cater for the mill.;
You, too, immortal Mr. Dool.
And Ella Wheeler Wil.;
And share with me the grave respons.
Of writing this amazing nons.!

– Harry Graham, in Life, December 1909

The Rebel Girl.

There are women of many descriptions
In this queer world, as everyone knows.
Some are living in beautiful mansions,
And are wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue blooded queens and princesses,
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearl;
But the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.

CHORUS:
That's the Rebel Girl, that's the Rebel Girl!
To the working class she's a precious pearl.
She brings courage, pride and joy
To the fighting Rebel Boy.
We've had girls before, but we need some more
In the Industrial Workers of the World.
For it's great to fight for freedom
With a Rebel Girl.

Yes, her hands may be hardened from labor,
And her dress may not be very fine;
But a heart in her bosom is beating
That is true to her class and her kind.
And the grafters in terror are trembling
When her spite and defiance she'll hurl;
For the only and thoroughbred lady
Is the Rebel Girl.
- written by Joe Hill, inspired by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

And here's Joan Baez, at Woodstock, singing 'Last Night I dreamed I saw Joe Hill'.

And here is Chaos Bogey (to whom I owe all of the above knowledge) writing about all of the above, but eloquently.

Still just about three-fourths through Zinn's A People's History of the U.S.

  

The Translation Conundrums.

Barking at the moon

On the rotting wharf that pilfering cur,
Pale yapping waif of a wharfinger,
Barks at the lonely moon:
The lonely at the lonelier.

O listen hard. By the wharf's stone wall
Where in the dark the water curls
To lap at land's ramshackledom,
There gloomy voices rise and fall,
Gloomy voices of yellow girls
Singing, singing of kingdom come.

Why must I hear such singing; why
Must I walk so ware of the world gone wry,
And why pale dog,
Unhappy dog, am I always I?

- Hagiwara Sakutaro
  translated by Graeme Wilson
  
I came across this poem in the December 1968 issue of Encounter, and I can never read it without reading it aloud. But this other translation is probably a more literal rendering of the poem:

Sad moonlit night

Drat that snatch-thief dog,
He howls at the moon from the rotting pier.
When the soul pricks up its ears,
It hears the shrill girls choiring,
Choiring
With their gloomy voices,
By the somber stone wall out at the pier.

Why is it always this way
with me?
Listen, you dog, you.
Tell me, you pale-blue, unhappy dog, you.

- Hagiwara Sakutaro

(I don't who the translator is for the second version.)

Graeme Wilson’s translations have been criticized, for taking "the creative role of the translator to the extreme, resulting in poems that only vaguely resemble Sakutarō’s originals" and I have no idea how much of Sakutaro am I reading and how much of Wilson. But then, I would never have come across Sakutaro at all if not for Graeme Wilson, and if I had come across the second version first, I wouldn't have been interested in reading more by or about Sakutaro. 

March 23, 1931 and March 23, 1988.

The first poem of the video for today (till 2:03) -


Nazm-e-Bhagat Singh.

Bhagat Singh

When my grandfather was born you were 12 years old
Saluting with reverence
the sacred soil of Jallianwala

When my grandfather was 12 years old
you attained martyrdom at the age of 24 years

When he attained the age of 24 year
You were still a youngman of 24 years

When my father came of age
You were still a youngman of 24 years

When I was of 24 years
You were still a youngman of 24 years

I attained 25, 26, 27, ….37 years of age
You remained a youngman of 24 years

On my every birthday
I march towards old age by one year
But on your every martyrdom day
You remain a youngman of 24 years

Every mother blesses her son
For long life and youthfulness
But indeed you are ever living youngman
Enjoying eternal youth
You will be of the same age as ever
when any coming generation will attain youth


- Jaswant Zafar

The most dangerous of all is the death of our dreams. 

On March 23, 1988, Avtar Singh Paash was shot dead. 


Sab ton khatarnak oh chann hunda hai
jo har katal kaand de baad
sunn hoye vehrhya vich charhda hai
par tuhadiyan akhan nu mirchaN wang nahi larhda hai.