Category: Poetry

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Poetry

Short poems by Mulla Fazul

Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch

Balochi poet Mulla Fazlul

Mulla Fazul (died around 1858) is considered one of the greatest poets of classical period. He is credited to have assigned new dimensions to classical Balochi poetry in terms of themes and diction. He also wielded equal command in Arabic and Persian languages which is evident in his poetry. The following poems have been taken from the anthology called, Drapshokin Sohail1, compiled and edited by Faqeer Shad.

MY BELOVED



Like the moon of the fourteenth night,

My beloved’s face glows bright.

She is the lightning on rainclouds,

Above the mountains that does strike,

Or a pomegranate 

That ripens in weeks

Its blooming buds. 

How desperately my ailing heart seeks!





WORLD



She seduces and ensnares a stranger

And her husband she cheats on and betrays.

The world is an unfaithful woman,

Each day she flirts in a new way.





HATRED TOWARDS BRETHREN



If a man harbours

Hatred towards his brother,

Off his sanity and wisdom will go.

The comforts of his abode

Away the scorching wind will blow

And soon the foemen

Subdue him with the sword.





DISUNITY


In disunity, what will you gain, after all?

The sun has gone past the horizons. 

Night has descended on the world.

It’s dark wherever I cast a glance.

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  1. Translation from Balochi: A Shining Star in Ursa Minor ↩︎

Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies.

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Poetry

Disaster Alert

Poetry and translation from Korean by Ihlwha Choi


A cat traffic accident occurred at the intersection.

With a pair of tongs, I managed to pick up the flattened head and body.

Collecting the entrails stuck to the hot asphalt, 

I climbed up to a nearby forest while picking up the shattered skull.

I wanted to pray for the cat.

Should I wish for a heavenly rebirth, 

or should I wish to be born as a beloved pet in the next life?

I couldn't think of a proper prayer.

Created by the Creator, a stray cat that has never harmed humans 

while living in an apartment complex.

Wandering between apartment gardens and walls, roaming between wheels,

I wondered why it met its end, flattened on the hot asphalt in broad daylight.

Until I dug the ground and created a burial mound,

I couldn't come up with a prayer for the cat.

Unable to pray, I silently told it to go to a better place in my heart

as I descended the forest path, and at that moment a disaster alert came in.

It felt like a condolence message mourning the cat's death.

11:00 AM - Heatwave Warning Issued

Citizens, please refrain from outdoor activities during the day.

Drink water frequently and avoid prolonged exposure to the sun.

Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.

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Poetry

Fire Engine

Masud Khan’s poem, Dhamkal (Fire Engine), translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam

Having fled the madhouse, the lunatic darted up the tree.
Nothing would make him come down, he said,
Except for the pleas of that midget-sized nurse! 

The nurse came running, quick as a fire engine,
Waving wildly at him. Her gestures were coded messages,
Inducing the lunatic to climb down from the tree top
Just as a koi fish descends on the dining plate.
Entranced by the smell of steaming curry, 
He descended easily and freely
As consecutive numbers do when one counts down. 

The lunatic’s thoughts flickered across the nurse’s consciousness.

This day that mad man will return once more to his asylum.
Placing his head on the confessional, 
He will soundlessly suffer thirteen electric shocks 
Designed to induce thirteen confessions from him  
At the directive of the calm and composed health priest!

Masud Khan (b. 1959) is a Bengali poet and writer. He has, authored nine volumes of poetry and three volumes of prose and fiction. His poems and fictions (in translation) have appeared in journals including Asiatic, Contemporary Literary Horizon, Six Seasons Review, Kaurab, 3c World Fiction, Ragazine.cc, Nebo: A literary Journal, Last Bench, Urhalpul, Tower Journal, Muse Poetry, Word Machine, and anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., NY/London); Contemporary Literary Horizon Anthology,Bucharest; Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace (Global Fraternity of Poets); and Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh(Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, New Delhi). Two volumes of his poems have been published as translations, Poems of Masud Khan(English), Antivirus Publications, UK, and Carnival Time and Other Poems (English and Spanish), Bibliotheca Universalis, Romania.  Born and brought up in Bangladesh, Masud Khan lives in Canada and teaches at a college in Toronto.

Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

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Poetry

Poetry by Radha Chakravarty

DESIGNS IN KANTHA 

Sewn into soft, worn layers,
forgotten fabric of grandmother tales –
patterns of the past, 
secret memories, hidden designs,
intriguing patterns in silk strands 
dyed in delicate dreamy shades— 
embroidered story-lines 
in exquisite, dainty kantha-stitch.

Years of laughter, heartache, bliss,
tears and yearning, rage, despair—
worked by artful needle into
guileless fictions of innocence,
pure and tender baby love.

Fleet fingers, fashioning
silent fables, designed to swaddle 
innocent infant dreams, shielding
silk-soft folds of newborn skin
from reality’s needle-pricks, 
abrasive touch of life in the raw.



(Previously published in Journal of the Poetry Society of India. Vol. 31 & 32, 2020-2021)



UPROOTED

Fallen tree on concrete sidewalk – 
thirsty roots clawing the air, screaming silently 
for the succour of your own familiar soil,
where all these years I saw you live and grow, 
blossom and bear fruit, and spread your shade
while, in your green branches, joyous songbirds nested—

Fallen tree, forgotten forbear, uprooted
to make way for the merciless coldness of concrete—
your plight robs me of my breath. 
I remember now my human ancestors, 
uprooted, like you, from native soil, 
by the concrete-hard harshness 
of a land divided, under foreign rule, 
displaced persons forced to find
new homes, on alien, unfamiliar soil— 
in a different world, indifferent to the fate 
of trees or men who stand in the way 
of progress, the high road of history— 
dispensable, left to live or die, 
in a world where the climate has changed.

Fallen tree, your exposed roots lay bare
the callousness of our world, which destroys 
trees, fish, birds, people, and our own ancestral roots, 
to build in steel, concrete and plastic
its developing story of growth, even as it blindly 
digs its own grave.



[From Subliminal: Poems, Hawakal, 2023]


Radha Chakravarty is a poet, critic and translator based in Delhi, India. Her new book of poetry, Subliminal: Poems, has recently been published by Hawakal. Her poems also appear in numerous journals and anthologies, including Journal of the Poetry Society of India, Contemporary Major Indian Women Poets, Narrow Road Journal, Soul Spaces, Culture Cult, The Poet (Lockdown 2020), Krishna in Indian Thought, Literature and Music and Indian Poetry through the Passage of Time. She has published over 20 books, including translations of major Bengali writers such as Rabindranath Tagore, Bankimchandra Chatterjee and Kazi Nazrul Islam, anthologies of South Asian writing, and several critical monographs. She has co-edited The Essential Tagore (Harvard and Visva-Bharati), named Book of the Year 2011 by Martha Nussbaum. She contributed to Pandemic: A Worldwide Community Poem (Muse Pie Press, USA), nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2020. She was Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at Ambedkar University Delhi.

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Poetry

Of Singing Mice, Biscuit Tins & Gym Bikes…

Poetry by Rhys Hughes

THE BISCUIT TIN  

Let us in,
Oh, let us in,
sing the mice to the biscuit tin.

Let me out,
Oh, let me out,
shouts a thing that lives within.

     And
     the mice
     change their minds.

In the
biscuit tin
the monster was dozing
and while dreaming
he cuddled his prehensile toes
with his trunk of a nose.
Imagine that!

     Now he’s awake
     and hungry for cake
     but who has cake in a biscuit tin?
     Not him, not him!
     He is dreadfully thin.

That’s
the sad thing
we sometimes forget
when talking of mice and monsters
— they get hungry too.

 
QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWERS 

What?
   When?
      Where?

She asked me,
and in order to reply
with accuracy and efficiency
I cunningly
replaced her
Double Yous with Teas.
     Do you see?

     That!
        Then!
           There!


THE GYM BIKE 

I pedal on the gym bike every day
but I go nowhere
out of my way — I stay right there
and always obey
the laws of physics and geography.

I pedal on the gym bike every night
and the moonlight
licks my brow — but why and how
it likes my taste
is beyond my powers of deduction.

I pedal on the gym bike all my life
and even my wife
hates the suction — of hard saddles
that hold me fast
because they will outlast my stamina.

I pedal on the gym bike every second
and the wall clocks
swooping in flocks — have given up
counting the miles
that remain until I reach myself again.

Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.

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Poetry

Poems by Sutputra Radheye

UNTITLED

(i)

the bird keeps coming back
to the tree that is dying 

why is it so hard
to leave what you once called home?


(ii) 

how many ghazals died
trying to teach you to love?

quite a few—
some were from kashmir
some were from gaza
some were from karachi
some were from delhi

yet you chose to repeat
the words dipped in hatred
again and again
every night

Sutputra Radheye is a young poet from India. He has published two poetry collections — Worshipping Bodies(Notion Press) and Inqalaab on the Walls (Delhi Poetry Slam). His works are reflective of the society he lives in and tries to capture the marginalised side of the story.

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Poetry

Wildfires in the Wind

By Prithvijeet Sinha

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Wildfires, how they rage 
as if pronouncing the unholy trail of human irony and hate. 
Waters of the Mediterranean, 
how they toss and turn,
to render children's lives ashen and subsumed in colourless urns. 

State of the world, 
torched by a disrobed tendril in the snow 
and a single drop of blood above fields meant to be plowed;

Washed asunder by demolished idols and the scarred face of Art, 
a son pleads to the mother 
to be taken to another part. 
Graffiti bombarded walls and measured inches of slam poems, 
these confront the enemies and agents of bad omens. 

State of the world, 
sealed in the infected mouths of bunkers, 
voices of agony down South where Sunday masses are alighted by a handful of flickers. 

Wild is the wind, 
that old messenger of incidences, 
a time to rise above courtesies, obituaries and condolences. 

*

Ceasefires aloft 
Taking a hold on the prized message of sisterhoods, 
capes, veils, raiment, all given to the smog for an imminent selfhood. 

Wild is the wind that carries the current of rivers, 
a poet's jilted heart in the rear end of heated discussions and a civilisation's tremors. 
Blow, blow ye wild wind, 
blowing upon the fate of the nation, 
impaired by speeches of a midnight hour, promises and ancient consolations.

Prithvijeet Sinha has prolific published credits that encompass poetry, musings on the city, cinema, anthologies, journals of national and international repertoire, as well as a blog, An Awadh Boy’s Panorama, from which these poems have been republished. His life-force resides in writing, in the art of self-expression.

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Poetry

Archeology by George Freek

ARCHEOLOGY 

There are no flowers, and birds
have sought kinder weather.
The gnarled trees,
bereft of leaves,
their limbs like leper’s arms,
seem from another planet.
Day by day,
as my hair turns grey,
I speak to myself, but I have
nothing important to say,
and what good are words?
They’re feeble tokens.
Creatures roamed this earth
for millions of years,
and not a word was ever spoken.

George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.

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Poetry

Poetry by John Grey

Groundhog. Groundhog Day is celebrated on February 2nd. If the groundhogs leave the den where they hibernated, the weather is supposed to move towards spring. This observance has its roots in ancient Celtic culture. 
GROUNDHOG DAY

It’s Groundhog Day.
The groundhog is somewhere
burrowed deep in the ground.
Either the groundhog 
doesn’t know what day it is
or he doesn’t care.
But, then again, 
Christ doesn’t show up
on Christmas either.
Just your father
and his new wife
with some toys.
It’s the one time of the year,
you see his shadow.


TWILIGHT

day flies off
like cardinals
and gold-finches

night
settles
on the branches
like crows

mice
scamper nervously
across the forest floor

all the birds
are owls


WORKING MY WAY THROUGH THE DICTIONARY, 
	I AM NOW AT Q

Some words 
have tens, 
if not hundreds, 
of synonyms.
Others,
hardly any at all.
That is why I’ve never 
written a poem about a quark.
That word, 
for want of an alternative,
would appear on every second line.
Even this poem 
has to repeat the word quark
just to get its point across.
So let this be my quark poem
and leave it at that.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. His latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. He has upcoming poetry in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.

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Poetry

Poetry by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
DANGERMOUSE




There is a metronome in the next room,

knocking against felled coconuts;



The body has parts like a salvage yard 

has parts, like the miniseries hacked up

into televised segments that beg you to

watch the exhibitionist whirl his dervish; 



hairy and monstrous, father just home 

from the bars…



Let the Dangermouse know; 

it is wise to be informed –



strafing metal birds and a cradle robber

recruiter to work the malls; expired 

coupons never come to collect,

this sourest of science.



Dentistry calls the canines, Marathon

comes a running, the rolling ecstasies,

the raffish unfallowed.



Destiny, the unopened suitcase.

Diving metal birds, the body in parts –



weeping linen closet, little Dangermouse  

knows it’s coming:



cover your eyes mouth toes:

a great biting frost returns to these

wailing unmeasured lands.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

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