Dreams Are Faceless
Dreams are but faceless
Eyes alone are a visible feature
And eyes indeed
Have a quaint crowd
Of faces;
Dreams lose their way in it.
Repentant sorrow
Of compromises
Renders dry and seer
Inner seasons of good cheer
Extinguishes flames of
Soulful sentiments
Covers with an icesheet
Of sad forebodings
All scenes of love - and loveliness!
Winds' reflections sink
In shallow waters.
It's soul's sickness
That draws
Lines of unfamiliarity
On bodies' wooden slates
(Destroying their intimacy)
Painting lips with a smile
Doesn't sweeten the taste of sorrows.
How long will you dread the sand
sitting on the shore
Of affliction?
A fistful of sand
Doesn't do either
Neither does it flatten up the ocean
Nor soak away
The glittering waters of the eyes!
Do you know?
It's wise not to wake up
While sleepwalking!
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1992.
Translated from Urdu into English by Dr. Satyapal Anand.
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The Door Of No Return
Those who passed from this door
Were negroes
With centuries-old ethos permeating
Their swarthy bodies.
This door
(The door of no return)
Opening on to an ocean
Was the gateway to
The Brave New World of slavery.
A return journey
Was only a scintillating dream
Reflected in the eyes of
The multitude of skeleton-like bodies
Aboard the sea-going vessels.
This door
On the shore
Now admits the white masters
Who pass with reverence
Recalling the bygone ages of their tyranny
But perchance forget
that Africa
Will shine like the rising sun of the
Brave New World.
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1995.
Translated from Urdu into English by Dr. Satyapal Anand.
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Dreams Lost In Water
No distance ever separates
Dreams and desires
No mirror ever dissolves
Reflection and water
In one's eye
What graph would you make
Of lines of thought?
The triangle of pain
Is without any angle
Countless races
Have dreams alike
But sleep and night-watch
Are never the same!
Names are forgotten
Codes alone come to mind
In nuclear setups
Dreams of radiant generations
Are smitten
By atomic explosions
Cities sink
Nuclei dissipate
Orbits dwindle
What remains
Are terra and sol
In the dance of death
God is a casualty.
A moment of brightness
In a light year
Breaking into smithereens
In a million eons
An accident - yes
But not an event
History is continuity
Broken once
Telescopic eyes, tired out, give up
Their distance watching
Lost planets
Bygone epoches
Have no interposition.
Who will look for
Flowers
In spring-fresh hands
Of tiny tots?
Who will see
Dreams
In eyes-yours and mine
In centuries to be?
No one is sure
Of things lost in water!
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1980.
Translated from Urdu to English by Dr. Satyapal Anand and from English to Spanish by Dr. Teresinka Pereira.
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A Change Of Scene Is But A Moment's Respite
In the sunbathed expanse of the sky
Birds were on the wing
Now lost in the quaint net
Of limetless space
In sky-lakes, azure blue,
They can't be seen.
Clouds kiss the hillock's lips
Then dance in ecstasy
Move around from valley to valley
Suddenly slipping from steep precipices
A comely face like a silken handkerchief
Gets soaked somewhere
In the rain of tears.
My dreams take a plunge
From the open window
And land
In the hands of the kids playing
In the eyes of the balloon seller
In the heart of the Gypsy girl
Hawking her wares - earthen toys.
The wind blows them away in a moment.
A change of scene is but a moment's respite
To look long and longingly
With a deep gaze of adoration
Is a palpable loss.
Whole life spans are spent
In slow motion.
Poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1980.
Translated from the original Urdu into English by Satyapal Anand.
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A Dream Fallen Out Of Sleep
Outside the abode of our sleep
Somewhere a dream burns
Somewhere tears sparkle
Somewhere a moon smoulders
Outside the abode of our sleep
Somewhere the sun rises
Somewhere the black beauty - night
Street walks
Somewhere an earthen lamp
Hides behind a facade
Outside the abode or our sleep
Somewhere bright birds flutter
Somewhere beasts of prey prowl
Somewhere there's a memory - forest
A desert there is - and a watershed
Somewhere a snowscape burns
Outside the abode of our sleep
Somewhere there's a cloud-burst
Eyes stare in longing
Somewhere in the ocean of the heart
Someone burns to a dry death
Outside the abode of our sleep
Somewhere two flowers bloom
Somewhere we see each other every day
Somewhere the wounds are sutured
Outside the abode of our sleep
Somewhere a roof is lit up
A door is afire
Somewhere hidden
Somewhere revealed
Outside the abode of our sleep
A dream burns.
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1979.
Translated from Urdu into English by Dr. Satyapal Anand
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See, If You Can......
See, if you can really see
The wilderness of history
The paths leading to Macedonia are dust-engulfed
' Alexanders of Fate' have vanished
The reverbrating footfalls
Around the nail of Konya
Are now reduced to lifeless echoes of a timeless moment
No dervish has stamina left in his spinning heel
Brightly lit up streaks have dimmed
Serial dances have all been obliterated
Eagles swoop down over Baghdad
The sharp edge of Damascus weapons are now blunt
See, if you can really see
The depths of your dreams
Have growing forests of poison-besmeared eyes
In place of a throbbing heart
Striped snakes of the New World
Now live in the ancient edifices
resting on pillars of Corinth
And the ancient iron boxes of secret treasures
kept in the magic cave
Have no red coins left
Only dollars!
See, if you can.........
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1990.
Translated from the original Urdu into English by Dr. Satyapal Anand.
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The Fifth Loner
Starting in the eyes, the dreams
end underfoot,
there the river lies still without the bridge.
It'd take centuries to build the muddy path
walking with the air and wind;
Time goes beyond me
And I am the solitary voyager
far behind you;
Holding on to the residual stores
of my life,
I wait for the moment standing
on the farthest point of the expansion
when the universe shrinks back.
The shadow of the night gets
terrified seeing the pointed
flame of the lamp.
The pavilion of the sky looks small, and
the light is more abundant than my heart.
But, the distances
are not longer than the
circles of the dreams;
In the divine seasons
when the stars blossom
like flowers; and
the butterflies flit around
the sun-fire, then
your moon like phizog
will appear on the
branches of the eternal dusk
If you have the spirit
to last and wait,
then, with a new pact
of the rudiments
I will come for you!
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1994.
Translated from Urdu into English by Bina Biswas
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Continuity
Winds dance
Black clouds gather
Trace songs of blue rains
On wooden tablets of the golden sun
In azure limitlessness of the sky.
Birds remember the earth
Through signs
Seas come to an end
On shores
Somewhere whole isles
Sink in tear drops.
Hark, O children
For stories get interrupted
If you're inattentive.
(Translated from the original Urdu by Dr.Satyapal Anand and from English to Spanish by Dr. Teresinka Pereira)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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The Fifth Loner
Beginning in the eyes
dreams end up at soles of feet.
The river is yet without a bridge.
For the earth is to become a path, a route,
centuries, a journey must endure.
Racing with water and wind
time overtakes me
and I, the lone
traveler of earth,
lagging way behind you,
holding close, the
left-overs of life,
from the farthest edge
of my expanse
wait for the universe to shrink.
They clay-lamp's flame
frightens the ghost of night.
The sky-canopy is too small;
the light more abundant than my heart.
But drams have a life, longer than all distances.
In seasons divine,
when stars, like flowers will bloom
and around sun-fire will hover, butterflies,
your moon-face will appear
through branches of eternal dusk.
If you'll have the strength
to endure and wait,
then, with a new arrangement of elements,
I'll come for you ….!
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1994.
Translated from the original Urdu into English by Yasmeen Hameed.
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Had Ocean Been My Confidant
Had ocean been my confidant
I'd have given it
All of my truths for safekeeping
Tales i would have written
Of seashells picking girls on beaches
Whose golden bodies were
Like isles of dreamland
But whose fates were
Like lines drawn in sand.
Had ocean been my confidant
I'd have given it
All my loneliness
I'd have walked with the wind
Clasping its finger in my fist
On distant paths
From whence no one comes back!
Had ocean been my confidant
I'd have given it all my depths
Stepping into its limitless
Blue bosom
I'd have made earth into my bark
Sky into my sails
I'd have made the woeful moment
Of separation
A connecting link between you and me.
Had ocean been my confidant!
(Translated from the original Urdu by Satyapal Anand)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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A Dream I Have To Write
A dream
I have to write
On the wooden slate
Of a child
Playing traunt from the school.
A moon
I have to write
On the forehead
Of a woman
Swarthier than evetide darkness.
A song
I have to write
On the frozen lips
of the wind
Passing through
A bamboo forest.
A name
I have to write
On an unmarked
Grave stone
In a memorial cemetry.
(Translated from Urdu to English by Dr. Satyapal Anand and from English to Spanish by Dr. Teresinka Pereira)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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No Life Span For Love And Dreams
We're aware
We're aware that between us there's
A haze of ignorance
Our steps but tread the path of our search
But can't see their goal
Much more exquisite and radiant
Than my poems is your inner self
And my eye-glasses are getting thicker every day
Do you know
Why poems and stories become wordless
Trying to poetise us?
They want to know our birth date
The place we were born
And our present age.
What do they know?
Dreams are neither born
Nor ever they die
No register enters their birth statistics
I just don't know
At what point of time did you learn to take your first steps
Holding the dream's little finger
I indeed am that dream
Which no one has never seen
I had died verily the same day
When my father had kicked my mother on her stomach
But I continued to grow inside my grave
Grew so much that
My mother could see me without bending
Once I dropped my camera and broke it
While taking some body's picture
Only then I came to know
Why dreams become utterly black in daylight
Why it's important to have
a dark liquid to expose them
I didn't know that light can be seen only in darkness
We're indeed not what we seem to be
There's some one else in our place
Wearing our costume
Flowing water has no shape
Shapes are but in our eyes
And to see a dream
One doesn't need sleep - but eyes
From protozoan to a human being
The sleep of bilions of evolutionary years
Is but an interval for opening his eyes
Love is the intervening space between life and death
And we use the yardstick of one life span to measure it
And go through a mesquerade of living
But love has no life span
It prevails from an unknown beginning
To an unknown end
At whatever point in time we find it
We fix our separate limits
And then define it with names and relationships
Greater indeed is melancholy than our knowledge and experience
Let it expand
How could one express in words
All that colours, flowers and butterflies convey
There's no other better medium of communication
Than silence to talk to birds, plants and nice people
How do we know - we might simply be
Going through the awakening process
From a dream greater than ourselves
And someone - with his universal eye might be watching us
Do not disturb the soul of God
While it is dreaming.
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1994.
Translated from the original Urdu into English by Satyapal Anand.
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Living Trophies
On their way to school
Carrying dreams of future
In their book bags
Kids grow into old man
Their prattle
Like tiny butterflies
Continue to live.
Of dreams and their interpretations
Of brightly lit hands
And happy lines of fate
Folks seperate from us
Their memories
Continue to live.
In the eve-time loneliness
In the head-splitting deep gaze
Like withering dreams
Scenes get blurred
Glued to the path - eyes
Continue to live.
In the empty spaces of life
In the courtyards of
Waning sunlight
Holding medals of valour
And defeats
Mothers of slain war heroes
Continue to live.
Poets
Writing on scraps die
Their poems
Continue to live.
(Translated from the original Urdu by Satyapal Anand)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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Desire Blooming On Air-Creeper Of Sleeplessness
Let me sleep
Centuries old deep
And long sleep
Devoid of any dream.
Let me sleep
That girl's sleep
Who has forgotten her eyes
Into mine.
Let me sleep
The sleep of those
In whose eyes
Float clouds and birds
Rivers flow
Yet they remain parched.
Let me sleep
O, deserts surrounding my four sides!
There is an ocean in my heart
Let me sink all my dreams in it
Let me soak my thirsty lips
Let me weep!
Let me sleep!
(Translated by Samina Amjad)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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Where Did You See Her?
Have you ever ventured
Beyond the dreams
Where the sulking night
Angry with her lovers, the moon and the stars
Dabs her bare body with ashes
And dances around a bonfire?
Have you ever peeped behind eyelashes
Into tired blue eyes
Where a whole world of woe
Swims in spaces unfathomed?
Have you ever spent a day
Under the greenwood trees
Erect sentry-like on each side of the road
Where the sun struggles
To find its way?
Have you ever asked
A wayfarer, a stranger
The directions to the house
Of the one
Whose waning footprints
The winds kiss
Wandering about from town to town?
(Translated from the original Urdu by Satyapal Anand)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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Windows
Windows open vistas for us
Windows - of hearts, of minds or of eyes
Windows - which might open outward
Or inward
They bring the light on the other end to this end.
Windows converse
They open the alphabetical locks of our lips
When night weaves nets of darkness on windows
Life-spans speak out in whispers from abysses of pain
Windows then perforce remain silent
Suffer days of tongue-tied laws
Nights of oppression
And epochs of tyranny
Windows are self same stories of dreams
Of centuries
Mute testimony of chasms
Court yards and ruined houses
Evidence of rusted eons rattling with exhaustion
in tyrant time's primordium continuity
Windows have the heart of a woman
They open their body's wings of each clime
With a little waft of wind
With fragrance, sunlight, rain or moon beams.
They blow away paper-light images
And waste away life in uncharted desires.
When butterflies fly in front of windows
Eyes glued to window panes become tearful
With noontide memories.
Evenings look forward to a wayfarer passing by
When they're covered with climbers
holding forth red and white flowers
They fill closed fists with the touch of fire-flies.
Windows often insist on being kept open
They're surprised to watch cloud, birds
And the blue sky's expanse
If they're kept shut
They're afraid of the life breath of
Walls and rooms getting strangulated.
They're afraid of dwellers forsaking their houses
They also feel life's desertion
They also feel despondent
Windows are human beings!
Poem by: Naseer Ahmed Nasir
Translated from the original Urdu into English by Satyapal Anand.
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A Faceless Portrait
Never-ending paths seemed to be ending
At yet there was no indication
Of a destination, a fruitful conclusion.
Realizing this he said
Come, Let's try to locate
Our lines of fate on the wind's palms!
And then azure waters
Frozen still from the dawn of time
Reverberated into expanding circles on the surface.
When the yellowed desert-like womb of time
Saw the birth of the sprouting
Shoots of woe
He was busy
Watching from the sea shore
Sails of boats.
The burning sand on the rims of his eyes
Had become wet.
And then it happened
Sitting on the other side of the wall of ennui
He was caught savouring
The taste of wind.
From that day onwards
Hiding their faces in wraps of sorrows
People figure out the lines of his face
From a distance.
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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Inside Domes
Desires are happy lyrics
Written on walls of sorrowful crying.
Paths are dreams
Of good days to come
But stay detached from destinations.
Lines are imprisoned
In circles.
So, keep walking on
Water is the end-all
Of journey in the desert.
Go, if you must
Following mirages
But carry oceans in your eyes.
Pass, if you must
In the forest of glass-encrusted silence
But keep stones of sound with you.
Live, if you must
Inside domes
But keep a door open!
(Translated by Satyapal Anand)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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Lighthouse
Tell me, O moisture
Halted in the eternity of my eyes
Which stagnant epoch has confined you!
God weeps rain
On some land of pain
Why only one dropp of my tear
Has stuck on His lashes.
Tell me, O breeze of shores
The name of the city
In which she waits for me
Who told me in a drenched voyage
love is an island, grief the sail!
Tell me the releaving spell
I will perform the ritual
Of departing
And will meet her
In long rows of stony pillars
I will hold her in my arms
And will hand over her
Odysseys of the lands
In exchange for only one kiss!
Tell me, O sign of light
Whether the images of peak-less
Rocks beneath the water
Are abstraction of olden centuries
Lying on the verge of eternity
Or sculptures of unreflected
Shrieks of slaves
Rowing in a fable!
Tell me, O magical bird
Flying over the waning immensity of time
Where is she
Whose memories have
Anchored the mast of ancient voices
In my heart.
Tell me, O star on land
Why travellers
Dream about you?
Poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir,1994
Translated from the original Urdu into English by Parveen Tahir
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A Proscribed Poster
Dreams
Insecticides sprayed
On stinking water in our streets.
Eyes of coming generations
Empty tins in our kitchens
Of dough, ghee and kerosene.
Dancer
Starvation dancing
In our courtyards.
Thirst
Our historical legacy.
Words
Prisoners of curricula
For you who read scripts.
We all
Prisoners of unseen dreams
For you who look for interpretations.
(1977, Translated by Dr. Satyapal Anand)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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A Poem About Expanding Distances
Paths are hot on my trail
And eyes...... as always they do......
Behind, far behind
Are nailed to apertures in the door.
My mom has furrows
Criss-crossed on her time-worn face
And like a dot sans word
Unaware of my own import
I am gaoled in the abdomen
Of starving books.
If one were to look
Into sisters' eyes at the moment of parting
One would know
How deserts are changed into oceans.
Do you remember
You had said at separation
When the dreams of journey
Spring forth from lines of the palm
To become the fate of my feet
Two eyes......as always they do......
Behind, far behind
Will be nailed to the apertures in the door.
And that moment
(you had said)
Will be the last link in our contact.
(1980, Translated By Dr. Satyapal Anand)
poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
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