Afzal Ahmed Syed :: Two poems
From the Urdu--
Translator’s Note:
The two nazms translated for this issue reflect the wide range of Syed’s subject matter and its treatment, while also echoing the understated haunting, and a search for poetic excess common to his expression. The first poem, published in 2009, simultaneously mourns the murder and celebrates the life of a dancing girl, one of the many victims of the short Taliban occupation of the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan. Typical of Syed’s style, the poem remains true to its historical circumstance—referencing the street, the incident, the place of her murder (slaughterhouse rotary)—and yet transcends the immediate by collapsing the present with the past and the future. It places the murdered girl on the altar alongside Mohenjo-Daro’s famous dancing girl, and wishes for her (imagined) trainees to continue dancing. History, poetry, and lived experience come together in his bare yet penetrating voice.
Syed’s second poem evokes a fatalistic yet hopeful sense of alienation that could be a universal human experience. The poem speaks for itself, but one can read his search for a new language to converse with one’s self as a parable for his work, or in fact all poetry. Is such a language possible? Perhaps, only poets have the key to it. Syed is surely leading the way in Urdu.
--TS
The Dancer of Bonair Street*
With apologies to all those
whose throats were cut on the rotary slaughterhouse
the poem at this time
only talks about the dancer of Bonair Street
who was dragged out of her house
and slaughtered
The poem does not know
the identity
Of those who picked up her photos
and her hard-earned currency notes
Thrown at her corpse
The poem only knows
that she had resisted the warning
And wants the young girls whom she trained
to continue their practice
In the end
the poem puts her on the altar
besides Mohenjo-Daro’s dancing girl
(who was once worshipped)
History
is in agreement with the poem.
*Bonair Street is a road in Swat
Learning a New Language
In a building near the shore
Where no one reaches alone
Except me and a neighborhood dog
I am learning a new language
To converse with
Myself
--Translated from the Urdu by Taimoor Shahid
Taimoor Shahid is a poet, translator, and scholar. He has published two book length works. His writings have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Vallum 9:1 “Poets from Pakistan,” Annual of Urdu Studies, #NewWriting, Tanqeed, Scroll, The Dawn, Chapati Mystery, Aaj, and Dunyazad, among others. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.
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