Asif Raza
Genesis
In the utter stillness of the void
The cosmic mind
Is privy to the bedlam of its own thoughts
Emerging from the bowels of the dark abyss,
The primigenial particle splits,
Violently shattering the silence of nihility.
The solar wind lashes motionless spheres,
And launches them in a circular motion.
Between the interstellar spaces.
The vortex of discordant thoughts,
Whirls round and round
Making a dreadful din.
The specter of darkness
Leaps headlong into the navel of the sun.
The dark cloud flashes,
Its trident of lightning,
Atop the temple of the night
A self-conflicted potency
Assumes the shape of a rugged mountain
From whose conical top
Full madness of the nether sphere gushes up high.
With their drawn swords of steel.
Raging waters
Carve gashes on the face of a granite rock.
In the lap of dark waters,
Deep down, upon the ocean bed
Fledgling nature’s mad passion is nursed.
The conjured project of a blind power!
From the thick mist rises
Sketch of a one-mast skiff
Which, rocked by waves
Sinks headlong into the stormy sea.
Summoned up on the shore
A protean living thing laments aloud,
Bashing its head against the stepping stone.
In a chamber, solitary and dark,
Terror rocks the cradle of an orphan soul.
**
What Difference Does it Make?
What difference does it make?
If a combatant
Throws down the gauntlet to his nemesis?
Or if I am in love with a harlot?
What difference does it make?
If you are sunbathing
In other’s approbation
Or if the belly of the polar bear
Is as soft as a down pillow?
What difference does it make
If we parasite on others’ existence
Or if nutmeg’s integument
Is orange-brown?
What difference does it make
If the riddle of existence
Is beyond our minds to unravel
Or if the merchant’s freight is duty-free?
What difference does it make
If one scribes miracles
On the pages —recto or verso—
Or if the passageway is paved
With gravel angular in form?
What difference does it make?
If it is not possible to plumb
The depths of your inner being,
Or if circumventing the wall,
The creeper claws its way up to the power pole?
What difference does it make?
If space and time
Are forms of our intuition,
Or if the four-masted stranded ship
Is loaded with cannonballs?
What difference does it make?
If the external world
Is verily internal,
Or if you relish mustard with your pumpkin pie?
What difference does it make?
If man’s senses are finite and flawed,
Or if the diameter of that jagged mountain
Is more than twenty-seven miles?
What difference does it make?
If on its back the tusked elephant carries
Guinea bags of gunpowder?
Or if on my biceps I have tattooed
A stinking carrion flower?
What difference does it make?
**
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 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.
Asif 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 Aaeene Ke Zindani (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.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
Asif Raza in The Beacon
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