This Translation Tuesday, we feature two exquisite poems of love and loss that take the moon as their emotional core. Drawn from the posthumously published collection Aankhein, this tender pair of poems by the Pakistani writer Sara Shagufta (1954–1984) wrestles with the experiences of mortality with an equal penchant for directness and metaphor: “death bore a child / left her in my lap.” Translated from the Urdu by Patricia Hartland, Shagufta’s poems here are suffused with a rollicking rhythm and a profusion of internal rhymes that move the ear as much as the heart.
moon’s debt
tears carved our eyes into being
in our
own
tidal tumult
we pulled at the ropes
our own deathwailing
the earth hears
the stars’ screams loudest
not the sky’s
i unbraided death’s hair
and was stretched out on a bed of lies
eyes, a game of marbles
in sleep’s keep
not-morning-not-night
the between-space
withstood its own duality
my moon owes a debt to the sky
[i loaned this
moon from the sky]
i am a lantern in death’s hand
from a wheel made of living
i watch death’s chariot
this selfhood, in the lands entered
this selfhood, covered in dirt
lift your gaze
do not bow
death bore a child
left her in my lap
how alone, the moon
the cage’s shadow is a prison, too
with every moment gone
I become more shadow
more of the shadow
that my clothes hang from
my hands, now others’ hands
not as much mine, not mine
without me the mud has no one
why does this river forfeit itself to the sea
how does it choose
to choose is to be alone
wrenched from the dead
I am sullen among the living
I go up in flames
wake up in flames
i echo echo echo
within the walls of a stone
when i drown in the mud
which tree will sprout up from it
this sorrow grieves its own name
child
in my hands, her broken toys
and in my eyes, humanity
countless bodies, begging me for eyes
where do I begin
the skies are my junior
the skies were born long after me
and there is no halting in flight
whose voice guides my hand
take my lies, live with them
when the birds are freed from the jungle
the lamp tastes fire
my body, a containment wall
my body, claimed for breeding
my body, the roof I dry my clothes out on
there is an eye in the void of me
and misery is the dress i wear
i’m the girl adorned with flames
why would you want my shadow’s name
when every night’s moon
i make yours
Translated from the Urdu by Patricia Hartland
Sara Shagufta was a Pakistani poet of singular vision and voice. Her collection Aankhein was published posthumously.
Patricia Hartland is a 2021 NEA Fellowship recipient and current PhD student of comparative literature at UMass Amherst.
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