John Martin: Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. 1822. Tate.
Asif Raza
Arch of Memories
(To my friend, Muhammad Umar Memon)
The setting sun
Turns into gold the green.
The arch of memories,
Lost in its splendorous dream.
A quiet pond—
Its only confidant,
Into which a rose
Drops its petals, silently,
Everness holding aloft,
On its granite shoulders,
A massive golden dome.
In it echoes
Music of the bygone years,
Which carries in its undertone
A sobbing note of grief.
*****
The Prophet
The sunless wind beating its drums.
Legions of dark forests
Rolling in waves.
Audible in the waterfalls
The wailing of a wandering soul.
The mountain’s tower trembling.
A foul-smelling canine growls;
And, the beast with its benighted eyes,
Snaps the stone-tablet
Upon its knees.
Wrapped in a shawl
Motionless stands the prophet
Like a rock dropped from the mountain top.
*****
The Mansion
Primeval darkness
Drawing near,
Accompanied by a stormy wind
And flashing bolts of lightning.
A mansion built of bricks and stones.
Within its protective walls
Celebration of a birth—
The hall erupts with the noise of felicitation,
Which is quickly quashed,
Like an ant under an elephantine foot,
By the deafening thunder of a cloud.
Looking inside through the window panes,
The visage of the ancient dark.
Trembling hands, pull the curtains down in haste.
Circling the mansion, the wind
Furiously beats on its doors and walls.
An ear-splitting thunder shakes it
To its very foundation;
Hanging from the ceiling by its iron chain,
The pulse of the branched chandelier sinks;
The specter of darkness
Enters the room.
A woman’s high-pitched scream—
Her husband feigns a laughter:
“My wife is afraid of the dark,” he says.
The storm pelting
Its roof and doors and wall with rocks.
The woman in a tremulous voice, recites aloud
Holy verses to ward the evil off.
When trembling hands
Mount waxen candles on the candelabras,
In the half light and half-darkness of the hall,
I make out,
Wrapped in hides and gathered in a huddle,
Shadows of cave dwellers.
I see the smoke of primeval centuries
Rising from their torches;
And behind its screen, upon the cave wall,
Writhing shapes of timeless mysteries.
Making guttural sounds that have no meaning,
They prostrate themselves
Before the ancient signs
Engraved on the wall.
In a flashing moments of the lightning bolt,
They cast upon the ground,
Enchanted dice of whitened bones
And bend over to interpret the pattern.
The demon cloud,
Juts its huge head inside the cave
And to frighten them
Re-echoes its ageless growl.
Mounted on the roof, the storm
Vanguard of a blind power,
Furiously, tearing up the tiles,
Tossing them left and right.
*****
Mausoleum
Will the promised coming be incarnate
In this austere mausoleum,
Apathetic to the wailing sounds of grief?
Will these imperious columns of stone
Be shaken from their foundation?
And will the living blood then
Gush out from these cold tombstones?
The heart-rending scream
Repeats itself and after lingering in the air
Drops down and shatters on the onyx floor
A stillness enshrouds the icy chambers
Whose reach extends
To the far off frosty horizons.
A stone statue
Solemnly sits on its seat
Its brow furrowed,
With lines of deep contempt.
In its hands it holds a black tablet on which
In hieroglyphic letters is engraved:
A covenant that bears
The stamp of nothingness.
The buried populace, venting its spite,
In the form of withered grass
Pushing its way out
Through the cracks.
*****
The Bottom
Plunging into the depths of our ecstasy
We discover,
Not recognized by us before,
Those colors, through which
Our sorrows reveal themselves to us.
Under a solemn stillness,
A glowing darkness gathers us
Into the folds of its somber embrace.
*****
A Bud…
When the autumn’s scream,
Like a lunging sword,
Reached down to the tap-root of the tree
The sapless branch let out
That which it had suppressed for long within:
A bud…blood-red.
*****
Sultan
His riding companions, pulling their reins
Fall back
His stallion neighs under his thighs.
Tearing its blindfold off its eyes
With its claws,
His hawk takes flight from his wrist,
Towards the sky, crowned by the sun.
It dawns on him
He has forfeited his kingdom.
The whirling wind, for whom he is a nondescript,
Flings a fistful of hot sand
In his face.
Before the neighing stallion
Eddies forming in the sand open their jaws:
He realizes
He has crossed into the realm of fear.
Pulling back its bow,
The sun shoots fiery arrows at him.
His throat is parched with thirst.
(In his sumptuous chamber
His goblet, engraved with pleasing patterns,
And filled with his favored bitter crimson drink,
Falls to the ground and shatters.)
He apprehends
That turning back is now impossible.
In the sea of desert sand he sees
A mighty wave rearing its head:
His rescue battalion
Coming down the sandy dunes?
A dust cloud on horizon—
His affronted army on the move?
A sphynx squatting on a mound being entertained,
By a whirling dirt devil.
(In his decorated chamber
His band of musicians, enraged,
Smash their music instruments upon the ground
And walk away.)
He recognizes, in a flash,
He is in the domain of death.
The castle is girded
With tunnels laid with dynamite.
Bending low the red-eyed foe
Lights up the fuse.
(In his bedchamber he dangles
Hooked with four nails on the wall,
On his face a dreamy smile.)
Above the growl of the desert cat
He hears the roar of his silver lions
Lining the palace portico.
Raising his eyes to the sky he sees,
Gyrating and screeching above his head
Vultures, kites and crows—
Among which he spots his hawk.
*****
The Insane
The consumptive woman extinguishes
With her icy breath
The light of his sparkling eyes.
The huge man steps forward
And crushes it
Under the iron heel of his thunder.
A bloodied heart
Throbs on his metal platter.
On the azure sky above is heard
A crackling sound of the crystal bowl
Of his childhood.
Up and down the moustache moves
As it gulps down big morsels,
Thereafter, in his face
Terrors fling open their closed door;
And he sees standing on a dilapidated tiled roof
Phantom of the night,
Smoking a pernicious weed
In his clay bowl of glowing coals.
Now, the silent birds
Immobile and waiting since eternity,
Speak to him in their own tongue.
He now hears:
Music of the catgut-string
And the laughter of a cadaver
Echoing in the room.
Conjoined with the wooden press
The book of Yesterday, Tomorrow and Today
Flaps its pages
Like a bird its wings.
Then under its tutelage
Everness takes the child;
And tenderly holding his hand,
Helps him to cross the bounds of night and day,
And of existence.
Beyond them he sees approaching him,
Sparks flying off his spurs—
A cadaverous rider on his horse.
*****
Narcissus
(Inspired by Georg Trakl)
In proximity to the sky
The lit up mountain is dark.
No echo calls him from its top.
Self- exiled to an uncharted territory,
And dispossessed of speech,
He lies down on the ground upon his belly
To behold himself—
But discerns
His reflection has fled
From the shining mirror of water.
*****
The Waiting Room
A blood-splattered evening
Reflected in a window pane.
On a scarlet carpet,
A crease kicked up by staggered feet
Raising its head.
Vanished without a trace!
On a tripod,
Thirsty for its cherished bitter drink,
An empty glass,
A despondent window
Hiding its face,
Behind the curtain’s folds.
A yellow withered flower in a vase.
And with her arms
Thrown around the crystal’s neck,
The dust, silent.
*****
Calamity
An ominous sign looming in the sun,
A malignant creature
Lets out its rallying cry.
An arched stony passageway,
His dark abode demolished
Rising, a cloud of dust.
His orbicular shrine
Now lies in ruins;
And his light tower is dark.
The silver sheet of morning
Is now blackened;
Night’s bosom denies him its shelter.
His saline acres
Now grow only ghastly weeds;
The fragrant forest of his violet flowers
Is on flame.
And death intently watches him
From her lofty tower.
*****
The City
When the evening shades are peeping
From under the bridge’s arch,
Should one look down,
Standing on the vaulting bridge,
Then one would see:
A shining city
Rising from its abyss,
Like an island from the sea.
Bearing upon its shoulder shining boulevards
And prancing,
It drools.
It traverses the circle of darkness
Over and over again
But finds no way to escape.
__________________________________ _________
Notes: --Translations from his Urdu collection by the poet. --All translations ©Asif Raza. Reprint of John Martin above courtesy: The Courtauld Art Institute, University of LondonAsif Raza writes poetry in Urdu and translates many of them into English. His poems have been published in several literary journals in India and Pakistan. Several of his original poems as well as his English translations of them were published in the now defunct bilingual journal, Annual of Urdu Studies, University of Wisconsin. He has authored three collections of poems: Bujhe Rangon ki Raunaq (Splendor of Faded colors), Tanhai ke Tehwar(Festivals of Solitude) and AaeeneKeZindani (Captives of the Mirror) published in two editions, the first one in Delhi, India (under the supervision of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, who also wrote its foreword) and the other in Karachi, Pakistan. Asif Raza came to the U.S. in 1975 on a fellowship. After a doctorate in Sociology, he taught at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb and a senior college in Texas. He lives in Tyler, Texas
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