Friday, December 23, 2005

"My happiness"   [sonnet impromptu 3]

My happiness   is speaking to your ear
perhaps   I could accept this strange condition
it's not as if   there's circumstance for fear
mere poetry's insufficient   for perdition

(inshallah)     hey   conversing   is a pleasure
we're anyway     adult   & intellectual
in poetry   the meaning weds the measure
that's why   betimes     it's seemingly   effectual

or is it?   take for instance this expression
it says   or this or that   but where's the motive?
it's laden   with impromptu   & digression
it's vocative   or casual   or votive
devotion   is a current in the deep
where shallowly   I probe the river's sweep

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

loved the last two lines... somehow the essence is the same, though the expression is different... in this rough translation of a poem on my blog... which was written for the hottest and coolest of all deities - Shiva...


chabuk ki chumban
the kiss of the whip

sakha tumhari yeh preet
my love (actually male friend),this love of yours...

hai chabuk ki chumban
...is like the kiss of a whip

palash bhavnaaon ke, meet
The "flame of the forest" (palash - has deep red waxy petals and booms in high summer)- the flower of emotions, my love

murjhate hain, chhod gagan
wither when they leave the skies

aagosh hai yeh paash
this embrace is a noose

ghee ke diye ki kaalik
the blacking of a lamp of ghee

sochti hun, kaash
I wish you were not

tum na hote malik…
the ruler

…mere sapnon ke
of my dreams

mere apnon ke…
and those I love

rakt se lathpath
slathered with blood

adharon ka chumban
is the kiss of your lips

tumhare har path
On every path that leads to you

par andhera, sajan
is darkness, my love

phir bhi, aviral behti yeh katha
even so, this story flows fluidly

jeevan ka har pal tumhari vyatha
with your pain in every moment of my life...

Fri Dec 23, 10:25:00 PM PST  
Blogger david raphael israel said...

ah Ishqa--

I'm reading this early on Christmas Eve morning. "Shiva was Jesus before him" quote the poet [Francis Brabazon in the instance], so what more suitable moment to partake of your Shaivite profundities? My blog has become spangled & deeply stained -- by a poetry larger than I've sustained. Many thanks for showing & translating, and too the imagination to discern hints of this underlying my (different-seeming) lines. What poet would not be happily encouraged by the gesture? Perhaps these laughable sonnets are steps of an ambling needing further steps. If rivers are deep but thoughts are shallow, wading further yet could follow.

merci, d.i.

Sat Dec 24, 12:38:00 AM PST  

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