Courtesy: Vadehra Art Gallery
Riyaz Latif
(Translated from Urdu by Prashant Keshavmurthy)
Water
shoreless centuries!
look at us
we’re still as we used to be
lost signs
on your dancing shores, fold within fold
in between fixity and negation on shifting sands
tell us who lifted and placed us
glaring on the ancient level
on the palm of ragged waters
where nothing existed
in the mirages of ruined spin-drift
in the desolations of the silent wave
the ocean our constant movement
the ocean perpetual feeling
the ocean gathering our grief into its barren breast
the space between life and our lives
homeless –
the swollen touch of the ocean’s vast breathing
trembling on the world’s vast brow
in its singular dispersal
tell us, who had made us
that impediment in the earliest swelling of waters?
that obscure endlessness of sands?
lost signs
only look
reckless centuries –
who was that liquid-form
insinuating himself, a space in the spaces of the water’s body
from the ocean’s steady coursing to its dancing shores
continually dreamlike
once again, that hellish expanse from desert to desert
that restlessness of the extinction of water in water
that revolution striking out of extinguished droplets
O shoreless centuries
turning to steam, the ocean has become the universe
and as for us
we remain as we used to be
flinging ourselves against dense waves
visitors of mortal spin-drift
those very lost signs
Fire
shoreless centuries!
abandoning your shores, look where we’ve reached
we-in the fire-temples of your hollow coursing
like unfinished worlds
burning others, ourselves burning
incarnated
and from somewhere within, somewhere
disgorging the skies high up
your night has formed us
adorned us
burned us
in the theaters of the sky
in the eyes of the stars
on the highways of eternity
tell us, who was that in those earliest sparks
like sounds
fevered, melting, coming alive
becoming perfect light
brilliant in some blood-dimmed rapture
waning on the breath
kindling the dry leaves of our minds, our hearts
becoming now the extinguished meaning of his own red figure
shoreless centuries!
having expressed your fire
we burst into light in bodies
somewhere outside — on the far side of the body
in remote dreams,
moving, passing into extinction
further, further on towards an unknown point
on those very familiar sands
seared by your touch
falling, incandescent in the soul
turning to smoke
look at us, centuries
we remain
on your obscure, distant shores
gathering and then incandescent skies
lost signs
Wind
shoreless centuries!
through your countless kindled flames have we passed
blowing like breezes
in those very familiar tones
blindly swooping in
round the bend of some broken horizon
from an unknown center
a ripple in the blood of unfinished worlds
of a meaningless flow
in the fashioning of their own dreams
touching bustling worlds, then vanishing
willful wind
ordering anew
up until now
the armies of your heartless moments
as if every breath arose and passed by
the hospices of some million births
far beyond the mind’s eye
O shoreless centuries
the winds fallen away from your breath
inscribe message after message
with their soft finger on faces without lineage
raising the storm of your name
shrieking, spinning in our desolate soundless bodies
whirling in our soul
in its own dense, pure gyre
pouring us out
having gathered our forms into its turning
shoreless centuries!
we’re still as we were
in the wind of your worlds
shrieking as we roam
in the mists of your forgotten shores, fold within fold
crazed, lonely without a form
those very lost signs –
Earth
shoreless centuries!
by the spell of your billowing and wakened waters
have grounds shot up — here, there
ever spreading, advancing, scattering
gathering the sands of countless feelings
creating us by the moment, raising us, destroying us
inaugurating your endless rising
fashioning our bodies
out of its own heart’s mud
imprisoning you in the vastness of its deserts
and us in our perpetual gyrations
we’re still who we were
who entered with you
into the press of this earth’s spaces
into the night densely prickling with stars
secretly turning into dying sound
it was with you we had entered
the lush wildness of forests
gilded grasses, rushing springs
becoming the stones of caves we arrived
at domes and niches resonant with your humming
at pillars risen from your vast yawning
waking earths slumbering in your every new expression
settling a million cultures!
perpetually beating in your dance, in your arrest
always in the hidden chambers of these silent places —
coursing in the swift, pathless forms of the cleft earth
O shoreless centuries!
how many wildernesses does your infernal beauty swallow!
as if dawn was extinguished in twilight’s bottomless pit!
sinking into the blind depths of this inferno
in the expanses of night and day
mountain, ocean, flower, leaf,
color and fragrance
coursing squandered
coming to nothing
O shoreless centuries!
we are what we were
the earliest guardians of the dispersed mud of your axis!
look, lost signs —
Body
shoreless centuries!
from the weak, obscure fortresses of our bodies
rises your murmur, sliding
coursing through veins, bones, the flesh
by the crenellations of the nose
in hearing, in vision,
sometimes in nameless feelings
abide worlds you had once flung up
from the regions of your dreams
you, touch of crazed emptiness spreading in the blood
you, taste thriving in the mouth’s famished world
you, great eagle of fragrance in the skies of our breath
tell me, shoreless centuries
how is it that hours are entangled
in the heartless pores of our hide?
through whose animated faces
only you may pass briefly like beauty
as the fruit of light’s branches may lose flavor
they were your fruits all
your very own elements
transformed utterly
becoming fire, turning to dust
rising in waves
lost in vain and upwelling winds
from spaces, from forests, from sands — becoming
massive earth
in the theaters of the body
where now even your echo tires of its own approach
what to speak of the body?
body a moment
body the dwelling of uprooted breaths
axis of the expression of your fire, water, earth
body the countenance of souls
station on the road to eternity
our path to you
O shoreless centuries
we are as we were
passing by the theaters of the body
the hospices of birth
reaching you
caravans silently advancing towards you
confidants
look — upon your dancing shores, fold within fold
those lost signs again
express us
for driven by the moment, your secrets into the heart,
forgetting themselves, unknowing
had arisen from you
will return unto you someday —
*******
Riyaz Latif is an art-historian of Islamic cultures. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the MIT, he taught art-history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, USA. He emerged as a significant voice in Urdu poetry during the last decade of the twentieth century, and his poems have been published in reputed Urdu literary journals of India & Pakistan. In addition to two collections of Urdu poetry, Hindasa Be-Khwaab Raton Ka (2006) and ‘Adam Taraash (2016), as well as a book of translations into Urdu from European poetry, Mera Khoya Awazah (2014), he has published articles on composite dimensions of literature, culture, art and architectural history. He also translates from Urdu and English, and some of his work can be found in the Annual of Urdu Studies. He is currently Associate Professor of art-history at FLAME University, Pune
Prashant Keshavmurthy is Associate Professor of Persian-Iranian Studies in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, Montreal. His research focuses on ideas of fiction, literary theory and authorship in pre-colonial and colonial Persian-Urdu literary culture. His first book, Persian Authorship and Canonicity in Late Mughal Delhi: Building an Ark, was published by Routledge in 2016. In addition, he has authored numerous essays dealing with a varied range of Indo-Persian literary and cultural phenomena.
Riyaz Latif in The Beacon “Mohenjo-Daro” and other Poems Reading “At a Window, Waiting for the Starlings” Fugitive Shadows: “Banaras” and Other Poems GHOSTS of MALKAUNS ‘Displeasure of Old Friends’ and other poems ‘ON THE SPIRES OF OUR BREATH’ MIRTH AND THE DUST-CLOUD: REMEMBERING VARIS ALVI
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