Let Them Snuff Out the Moon – Faiz’s prison poetry: a line blurred between beauty and suffering
// February 7th, 2010 // Poetry, Reading(s)
VB pointed me to this:
http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/2010/01/28/BLOGS/16744
Which has a translation of Faiz’s ‘Zindan ki ek shaam’ by Agha Shahid Ali:
Each star a rung,
night comes down the spiral
staircase of the evening.
The breeze passes by so very close
as if someone just happened to speak of love.
In the courtyard,
the trees are absorbed refugees
embroidering maps of return on the sky.
On the roof,
the moon – lovingly, generously -
is turning the stars
into a dust of sheen.
From every corner, dark-green shadows,
in ripples, come towards me.
At any moment they may break over me,
like the waves of pain each time I remember
this separation from my lover.This thought keeps consoling me:
though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed
in rooms where lovers are destined to meet,
they cannot snuff out the moon, so today,
nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed,
no poison of torture make me bitter,
if just one evening in prison
can be so strangely sweet,
if just one moment anywhere on this earth.Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Translated from the Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali
Which, in turn, led me to an article on urdustudies.com by Genoways - “Let Them Snuff Out the Moon”: Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Prison Lyrics in Dast-e Saba (pdf). Which starts as follows:
At 6:30 A.M. on March 9, 1951, a group of policemen arrived at the house
of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, editor of the liberal Pakistan Times and one of the
nation’s most prominent poets. Faiz’s wife Alys woke to the sound of
loud voices repeatedly calling her husband’s name. “I crossed the
verandah, and looked down over the parapet into the garden below,” she
wrote later. “I could see armed police—plenty of them—they had
surrounded the house” (Faiz, Alys 1993, 133–4). The elections for the
Punjab Assembly were scheduled for the next day, and Faiz told Alys that
he suspected the police only intended to detain him long enough to
assure his silence until after the elections. Before he could tell her
anything more, the men pried open the doors and the upper courtyard of
the house was suddenly filled with policemen, “their rifles at the ready”
(ibid., ).
The officers did not know the exact charges but insisted that Faiz
come with them. He refused to leave until he could consult with Mazhar
Ali Khan, his colleague at the Pakistan Times. By the time Khan arrived at
the house, a warrant had been produced for “[i]ndefinite detention
without trial under the Bengal Regulations of 1818” (ibid.)—an outdated
law created by the British to hold anti-government elements. Khan
assured Faiz that this was merely a short-term election detention and that
he should go quietly. After he was allowed to gather bed linens and a few clothes,Faiz was loaded into a jeep and taken to Sargodha jail, but the superintendent of
the all-women’s prison had not been informed of Faiz’s arrival.
While the superintendent was on the phone trying to straighten out
the matter, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan came on the radio with an
important announcement. He said that a conspiracy to overthrow the
government had been uncovered and the leaders of this intended coup
arrested. They were identified as Major General Akbar Khan, Chief of
General Staff; his wife Nasim Akbar Khan; Brigadier Muhammed Abdul
Latif Khan, Commander 52nd Brigade and Station Commander Quetta;
and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. In his statement, the Prime Minister declined to
“disclose publicly the details of the plans of those who were implicated in
the conspiracy,” citing national security concerns, but he asserted that
they had intended to use “violent means” to disrupt “the stability of
Pakistan”.
The irony perhaps is that Faiz may never have had the inclination or time to write some of his finest (and thus, some of the world’s finest) poetry, had he not been imprisoned..
Here is the poem in its transliterated glory:
Shaam ke pecho-kham sitaron se
Zeena-zeena utar rahi hai raat
Yoon saba paas se guzarti hai
Jaise keh di kisi ne pyaar ki baat.
Sahn-e-zinda ke be-vatan ashjar
Sarnigun mahav hain banain mein
Damn-e-aasman pe nakshe-nigaar.Shaan-e-baam par damakta hai
Meherban chandi ka dast-e-jameel
Khaak mein dhul gayi hai aabe-najoom
Noor mein dhul gaya hai ashr ka neel.
Sabz goshon mein neelgoon saaye
Lahlahate hain jis tarah dil mein
Mauj-e-dard-e-phirak-e-yaar aaye.Dil se paiham khayal kahta hai
Itni shireen hai zindagi is pal
Zulm ka zahar gholnewale
Kamran ho sakenge aaj na kal
Jalvagahe-visaal ki shamayein
Vo bujha bhi chuke agar to kya
Chand ko gul karen, to hum jane.- Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
via :::…Szerelem, Szerelem…:::: Let Them Snuff Out the Moon. (this page is quite interesting and worth reading – has an additional translation from Genoways, more true to the original)
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