Faiz Ahmad Faiz | Fragrant Hands | Translated by Agha Shahid Ali

 Faiz Ahmad Faiz | Fragrant Hands | Translated by Agha Shahid Ali

Fragrant Hands 

(For the anonymous woman who sent me a bouquet of flowers in prison)

A strange arrangement to comfort the heart--
someone has made that possible
in a corner of the cell
with giving generous hands,

and the air is now so softened,
I compare it with the beloved’s hair,
the air is so drowned,
I think a body, wearing a jewelry of blossoms,
has just passed this way.

And as the air holds itself together,
a bouquet of compassion,
I can say:

Let thousands of watches be set on cages
by those who worship cruelty,
fidelity will always be in bloom –
this fidelity on which are grafted
the defeats and triumphs of the heart.

      *     *     *

Should you, Oh air, ever come across her,
my friend of fragrant hands, recite this from Hafiz of Shiraz to her:
“Nothing in this world is without terrible barriers –
Except love, but only when it begins.

– Faiz Ahmad Faiz,
Central Jail, Hyderabad
28, 29 April, 1953

Personal note:

I remember hearing somewhere that Salman Rushdie based his character Nadir Khan in Midnight's Children on the real life occurrences of his own family's experience with Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and that Faiz hid in the basement of Salman Rushdie's family's house and that his vivid retelling of the poet in the basement was owing to this honoring of memory and how his family helped keep Faiz safe for a time.

A Fable - William Faulkner

 ‘Dont be afraid,’ the corporal said. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing worth it.’

For a moment the old general didn’t seem to have heard the corporal at all, standing a head below the other’s high mountain one, beneath the seemingly insuperable weight of the blue-and scarlet hat cross-barred and dappled with gold braid and heavy golden leaves. Then he said, ‘Afraid? No no, it’s not I but you who are afraid of man; not I but you who believe that nothing but a death can save him. I know better. I know that he has that in him which will enable him to outlast even his wars; that in him more durable than all his vices, even that last and most fearsome one; to outlast even this next avatar of his servitude which he now faces: his enslavement to the demonic progeny of his own mechanical curiosity, from which he will emancipate himself by that one ancient tried-and-true method by which slaves have always freed themselves: by inculcating their masters with the slaves’ own vices— in this case the vice of war and that other one which is no vice at all but instead is the quality-mark and warrant of man’s immortality: his deathless folly. He has already begun to put wheels under his patio his terrace and his front veranda; even at my age I may see the day when what was once his house has become a storage-place for his bed and stove and razor and spare clothing; you with your voice could (remember that bird) see the day when he will have invented his own private climate and moved it stove bathroom bed clothing kitchen and all into his automobile and what he once called home will have vanished from human lexicon: so that he won't dismount from his automobile at all because he wont need to: the entire earth one unbroken machined de-mountained dis-rivered expanse of concrete paving protuberanceless by tree or bush or house or anything which might constitute a corner or a threat to his invisibility, and man in his terrapin myriads enclosed clothesless from birth in his individual wheeled and glovelike envelope, with pipes and hoses leading upward from underground reservoirs to charge him with one composite squirt which at one mutual instant will fuel his mobility, pander his lusts, sate his appetites and fire his dreams; peripatetic, unceasing and long since no longer countable, to die at last at the click of an automatic circuit breaker on a speedometer dial, and, long since freed of bone and organ and gut, leaving nothing for communal scavenging but a rusting and odorless shell— the shell which he does not get out of because he does not need to, but which presently for a time he will not emerge from because he does not dare because the shell will be his only protection from the hail-like iron refuse from his wars. Because by that time his wars will have dispossessed him by simple out-distance; his simple frail physique will be no longer able to keep up, bear them, attend them, be present. He will try of course and for a little while he will even hold his own; he will build tanks bigger and faster and more impervious and with more firepower than any before, he will build aircraft bigger and faster and capable of more load and more destruction than any yet; for a little while he will accompany, direct, as he thinks control them, even after he has finally realized that it is not another frail and mortal dissident to his politics or his notions of national boundaries that he is contending with, but the very monster itself which he inhabits. It will not be someone firing bullets at him who for the moment doesn’t like him. It will be his own Frankenstein which roasts him alive with heat, asphyxiate him with speed, wrenches loose his still-living entrails in the ferocity of its prey-seeking stoop. So he will not be able to go along with it at all, though for a little while longer it will permit him the harmless delusion that he controls it from the ground with buttons. Then that will be gone too; years, decades then centuries will have elapsed since it last answered his voice; he will have even forgotten the very location of its breeding-grounds and his last contact with it will be a day when he will crawl shivering out of his cooling burrow to crouch among the delicate stalks of his dead antennae like a fairy geometry, beneath a clangorous rain of dials and meters and switches and bloodless fragments of metal epidermis, to watch the final two of them engaged in the last gigantic wrestling against the final and dying sky robbed even of darkness and filled with the inflectionless uproar of the two mechanical voices bellowing at each other polysyllabic and verbless patriotic nonsense. Oh yes, he will survive it because he has that in him which will endure even beyond the ultimate worthless tideless rock freezing slowly in the last red and heatless sunset, because already the next star in the blue immensity of space will be already clamorous with the uproar of his debarkation, his puny and inexhaustible voice still talking, still planning; and there too after the last ding dong of doom has rang and died there will still be one sound more: his voices planning still to build something higher and faster and louder; more efficient and louder and faster than ever before, yet it too inherent with the same old primordial fault since it too in the end will fail to eradicate him from the earth. I dont fear man. I do better: I respect and admire him. And pride: I am ten times prouder of that immortality which he does possess than ever he of that heavenly one of his delusion. Because man and his folly—’

‘Will endure,’ the corporal said.

"They will do more,’ the old general said proudly. ‘They will prevail.'

--

Editor's note: I first heard this on the b-side of William Faulkner's Caedmon recording, the a-side of which has his more famous and related Nobel Prize speech.  This always felt like the darker twin to that speech, more filled with dread at the coming enslavement of humans to their own creations of technology, now borne out by AI, self-driving cars and nightless nights among other things.  

Maps - Kaleem Omar

https://www.loc.gov/item/95770033

Much of our north is still safe from the exactitude of maps.

The survey of Pakistan has not pinned down 

each water sound to its hidden source.

The movements of the Marco Polo sheep 

are not yet reproduced in dotted lines.

In any life some secrets should remain 

the property of those who need to live with them.

The telescoping eagle drops undisturbed 

alone to its young below the stones of Rakaposhi.

The pitching trail above Baltit wanders 

undescribed, free from the tyranny of tourist guides.

Rest houses are few and far between.

The Neelum Valley still has no safe way in.

This, everything we were insists, is as it should be.

No map can ever sustain the instantaneous 

release the eye is air to when we, 

leaning into the buttock-only climb, 

catch the snow held breath of the meadows at Lalazar.

Only a stray cow and buttercups in sight.

The track through Chakdara is not all weather.

I know the climate cannot retain this quality forever.

Someday giant bulldozers may fill the gaps 

between these rocks

to fabricate the dams necessary for development.

But what develops here, 

will not appease our need for the cold 

of a Kojak wind, footloose 

without baggage beyond Shilabar.

How long, the question stings, 

can we walk the precipice?

Each year they advertise 

one more spot for which a plan is made.

Houses impinge their shabbiness upon the pines.

Would they have even the forests 

of Astor preclude the vanishing?

The national gross may increase, 

but there should be a limit to utility.

Con trails are not after all fair 

exchange for unattended streams.

Already they begin to cut us down 

to the close size of reference grids.

Indifference too begins at home.  

But we must refuse the begging bowl 

of civilized embellishments.  The fall 

of empires worms from within, 

irrespective of the time and latitude.

Few know that Mariam, the strongest woman 

of her day in Balakot, remained unmarried 

to the end because no suitor, and there 

were many, could match her feat of lifting 

a huge stone high before she would allow him 

to speak of possessing her.  Today that stone 

lies on a rough edge base where the Kunhar's 

savage water evens out.  Whatever the Western 

rain may bring, we should mark such names.  

The animal tracks along the edge of Balika 

Parbat cannot obliterate the value 

of our stamp upon the ground. 

But we would breathe a whiter air 

if snow leopards kept their vigil here.  

The routes of Hunza's trees 

may be measured when they are cut, 

but no census will count the poverty of leaves 

per capita.  The mind makes its own weather.  

Nevertheless we hope that Mariam's strength 

will hold its link with each new fanged element, 

what lives too long divided from its origins.  

~Editor's note: I heard this poem on the Library of Congress website and was immediately struck by its directness.  I have not seen it reproduced, so this is my best guess at line breaks and spellings.  I ask anyone who reads it to hold me accountable for my faults, but not the poems.

 The Palace of Power 

“The palace of power is a labyrinth of interconnecting rooms,” Max once said to his sleepy child. She imagined it into being, walked towards it, half-dreaming, half-awake. “It’s windowless,” Max said, “and there is no visible door. Your first task is to find out how to get in. When you’ve solved that riddle, when you come as a supplicant into the first anteroom of power, you will find in it a man with the head of a jackal, who will try to chase you out again. If you stay, he will try to gobble you up. If you can trick your way past him, you will enter a second room, guarded this time by a man with the head of a rabid dog, and in the room after that you’ll face a man with the head of a hungry bear, and so on. In the last room but one there’s a man with the head of a fox. This man will not try to keep you away from the last room, in which the man of true power sits. Rather, he will try to convince you that you are already in that room and that he himself is that man. If you succeed in seeing through the fox-man’s tricks, and if you get past him, you will find yourself in the room of power. The room of power is unimpressive and in it the man of power faces you across an empty desk. He looks small, insignificant, fearful; for now that you have penetrated his defenses he must give you your heart’s desire. That’s the rule. But on the way out the fox-man, the bear-man, the dog-man and the jackal-man are no longer there. Instead, the rooms are full of half human flying monsters, winged men with the heads of birds, eagle-men and vulture-men, man-gannets and hawk-men. They swoop down and rip at your treasure. Each of them claws back a little piece of it. How much of it will you manage to bring out of the house of power? You beat at them, you shield the treasure with your body. They rake at your back with gleaming blue-white claws. And when you’ve made it and are outside again, squinting painfully in the bright light and clutching your poor, torn remnant, you must persuade the skeptical crowd- the envious, impotent crowd- that you have returned with everything you wanted. If you don’t, you’ll be marked as a failure forever.”

"Such is the nature of power" he told her as she slipped towards sleep "and these are the questions it asks.  The man who chooses to enter its halls does well to escape with his life.  The answer the question of power by the way, he added as an afterthought, is this, do not enter that labyrinth as a supplicant, come with meat and a sword.  Give the first guardian the meat he craves because he is always hungry and cut off his head while he eats, then offer the severed head to the guard in the next room.  When he begins to devour it, behead him too.  When the man of power agrees to grant your demands however, you must not cut off his head.  Be sure you don't.  Decapitation of rulers is an extreme measure hardly ever required, never recommended.  It sets a bad precedent.  Make sure instead that you ask not only for what you want but for a sack of meat as well.  With the fresh meat supply you can lure the bird men to their dooms, off with their heads, chip chop, until you are free.  Freedom is not a tea party India, freedom is a war."

~from Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

As Ever - Agha Shahid Ali

https://youtu.be/Cwi-8EwjxiU
(read by Karan Kapoor)

 (after Ahmad Faraz)

So I’ll regret it. But lead my heart to pain.
Return, if it is just to leave me again.

“Till death do us part.” Come for their sense of us, . . .
For Belief’s sake, let appearances remain.

Let YOU, at Elysian Fields, step off the streetcar—
so my sense of wonder’s made utterly plain.

Not for mine but for the world’s sake come back.
They ask why you left? To whom all must I explain?

I laughed when they said our time was running out—
I stirred the leaves in the tea I’d brewed to drain.

Break your pride, be the Consoler for once—
Bring roses, let my love-illusion remain.

An era’s passed since the luxury of tears—
Make me weep, Consoler, let blood know its rain.

From New York to Andalusia I searched for you—
Lorca, dazzled on your lips, is all of Spain.

“Time, like Love, wears a mask in this story.”
And Love? My blind spot. Piercing me to the brain.

Oh, that my head were waters, mine eyes a fountain
so that I might weep day and night for the slain.

Shouting your name till the last car had disappeared,
how I ran on the platform after your train.

To find her, ’round phantom-wrists I glue bangles—
What worlds she did not break when she left my lane!

Still beguiled with hopes of you, the heart is lit.
To put out this last candle, come, it burns in vain.

from The Art of Stalking and Parallel Perception by Lujan Matus

Then the scene came to a rushing halt, in front of me was that man's crown of thorns, he lifted his head and looked at me calmly, "Take this vision back with you.  I have been incorrectly represented.  How can you bypass what you think you know?  It is a constant framework that humanity is caught within, and that which encircles us is like a crown of thorns.  Each time one attempts to intend beyond that structure the thorns bypass that intention to evolve by pointing it in an incorrect direction, away from the essential truth that needs to emerge. 

The sharpness of the thorns represents the pain of that misdirection and the blood trickling down the forehead is life lost. The intensity that can be intended is represented by the emptiness of the mind that receives information directly from the heart by way of it's formless receptivity."  

The scene shifted and now I was viewing the palms of his hands while the voice continued to describe what I was seeing.  "From here, where I am damaged, warmth and fullness pour out in an uncontrollable deluge and as a consequence the kindness that is held steadfast in this position is lost.  

When this point is pierced, the heart cannot even recognize itself for this wound represents the annihilation of love and truth between all men.  Without its strength, there can be no healing in the world nor true understanding. From these locations energy rushes to the center, to the chambers of one's heart." 

The scene shifted again and my attention went to his feet.  "Within the top arch of the foot, the substance of man is held upright. If this point is pierced, man's substance will collapse and invariably the strength of man will sink too low for him to realize he has fallen.  When the underside of the arch is damaged through the piercing from the top, the power of the kidneys is weakened where inspiration and lifeforce reside."  

Once more the scene shifted and I saw the left hand side of his body, which had been stricken.  "When the pancreas and spleen are damaged in this fashion the body cannot uphold true realization, that which erupts into the heart as pure knowing.  Instead what pours in is an incessant nagging which is recirculated by the misdirected intention that has been gripped by the thorns.  If the right hand side is pierced, where the liver resides, then the eyes will not see the truth of the future, nor know how to move towards that horizon. 

The unification of all these vital centers is to be strengthened, and the weaknesses are to be avoided.  For if these points are compromised, this will have a devastating effect on awareness."  With this last utterance, the scene vanished, and I was back in the tomb.  My focus went immediately to the man, and I realized that he was in excruciating pain.  I knew that he had been tortured and scalded with boiling oil.  He was looking at me with a deep sense of urgency.  He was so focused on what he needed to do, and what he wanted to communicate, that for him, it was more important than his impending death.  

He whispered softly, "Be pure of heart, and innocent within your intentions."

Huichol Indian Tree Marriages ~ from Bill Plotkin

Our capacity for soulcentric romance can be deepened through a cultivated relationship to nature.  In some villages of the Huichol Indians of Mexico, before a young man or woman is considered ready for marriage, they 'wed' a tree for four years.  This initiatory rite, undertaken at about age fifteen, rests on the understanding that the chosen tree represents the initiate's own perfect partner, what the Huichols think of as the opposite hidden within.  The initiate regularly visits their tree and pours out their longing for 'the perfect love.' The young woman or man talks to their tree when happy or sad, when scared, angry or confused; they confide their losses and successes.

Through this relationship with their tree partner, young Huichols enter the depths of their own psyches, with the tree acting as the screen for projected hopes and fears associated with joining with another person.  They cultivate this relationship for four years, an appropriate duration for a beginning marriage with the self.

~Quoted from Soulcraft