Poetry by Atta Shad, translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch
Had we known the fate of tomorrow,
Today would’ve not slipped
So carelessly from our hands.
Alas! On the gallows of follies,
Desire stands condemned.
True — it is the heart alone
That bears witness to God’s existence,
Not the eye,
For each reflection is a slave to sight.
But what the heart feels —
That alone is the truth:
The rest is illusion.
Some walk with reason,
Some, in a dreamlike haze,
Yet all are bound together,
Step by step,
Carrying the weight of longing
In the folds of a thirsty soul.
In the vast realm of my imagination,
Stands the idol sculpted by my own hands.
I bow before it—
This endless expanse but remains devoid of the Divine.
From being, nothingness emerges,
And from nothingness,
The being is born, over and again.
The lament for yesterday,
The hopes for tomorrow,
The wealth of ages
In search of unseen wisdom,
Wander upon the shores of today.
Either the flood shall wash them away,
Or the shore shall stand unshaken
Before the surging tides.
Where lies the end
Of this unquenchable thirst?
Atta Shad (1939-1997) is the most revered and cherished modern Balochi poet. He instilled a new spirit in the moribund body of modern Balochi poetry in the early 1950s when the latter was drastically paralysed by the influence of Persian and Urdu poetry. Atta Shad gave a new orientation to modern Balochi poetry by giving a formidable ground to the free verse, which also brought in its wake a chain of new themes and mode of expression hitherto untouched by Balochi poets. Apart from the popular motifs of love and romance, subjugation and suffering, freedom and liberty, life and its absurdities are a few recurrent themes which appear in Shad’s poetry. What sets Shad apart from the rest of Balochi poets is his subtle, metaphoric and symbolic approach while versifying socio-political themes. He seemed more concerned about the aesthetic sense of art than anything else.
Shad’s poetry anthologies include Roch Ger and Shap Sahaar Andem, which were later collected in a single anthology under the title Gulzameen, posthumously published by the Balochi Academy Quetta in 2015.
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. Fazal Baloch has the translation rights of Atta Shad from the publisher.
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