Father; I will not go to school, there they teach the history of days of long dead. Math's formulas are old, the rusted components of a machine, I refuse to live in history's pages, I must live in days still to come, I must overtake history, become something more. So father, I will not go to school, there they teach the history of days long dead. I perfer ideals that I can feel to ideals which are locked in a frame, I prefer buidling my road as I travel to walk a ready-made road, my muscular arms need a hoe, not a tome, and plans are not for me. My feet must traverse each lofty peak to pay off the debt of this earth. Father I will not go to school, there they teach the history of the days long dead.

Rahar "A Wish" by Haribhakta Katuval as translated by Michael James Hutt

Kathmandu is a heater enflamed by one hundred thousand volts; this capital's orphan girls sit waiting; like Sita on her pyre of fire, ready to brand their bodies of gold, snared by the noose of its love. Snow-white doves fly the endless blue sky, there's a prison in each citizen's eye, as Rani Pokhari floods with color, there comes dark smugglers and sneaks, fat hypocrites and backbiters, and all are made pure. Pipal trees, comb trees, mimosa, kalki and juniper in rows wave their fans at inhabitants pure and foul, but Kathmandu is not just cool calm, Kathmandu is hocus-pocus, too. And isn't it also that white-wheeled Toyota which gulps down its petrol, never satisfied? And isn't it also Nanicha's wine store where young men come in swarms each day: Gunjamans, Ram Bahadurs, heads held high, who go home to beat their wives? A Toyota's tire marks deep on the street, green bruises covering women: samples of perhaps of each Kathmandu day. Kathmandu makes my poor, dear son cry out in his dreams every night; half I understand, half I do not, but still I wish to hear, hemmed in an oppressed by past attractions, repulsions, I find that many will curse me, I find there are few who like me: I have come to live in Kathmandu, but Kathmandu does not live in me. The countless processions of these city streets pour forth each night in my dreams, my nights are weighed by uproar, they belong to Kathmandu, covered entirely by mist. How silent my cold mornings, as if the city's dead have waited all night, and are rotted completely away. It is an interesting epic, beloved Kathmandu, full of stories, sweet and bitter: the opening verses of tremendous speeches, the communal song of wants and needs; wages- the happy chance of increase, prices- the miserable rise, an unremitting struggle of loss and gain: oil fo the lamp and sugar, everything is here. Wretched Kathmandu, dear to everyone, abused by all, its people narrators of Satyanarayan, forever repeating the ancient tales, of Lilavati and Kalavati, always singing the same forest creeper, always walking the same back streets, always keeping the same feasts, always observing the same holidays, ceaselessly they chant, like kakakul birds, Kathmandu, Kathmandu, Kathmandu, Kathmandu.

("Kathmandu" Pacchis Varshaka Nepali Kavita) by Banira Giri as translated by Michael James Hutt

Let me think just for a while... In that withered garden, more bare than even a desert now, which branch first burst into blossom? And which was the first to lose its colors before everything succumbed to regret? At what exact moment were the trees drained of blood so when the veins snapped, nothing could be saved? Oh, let me think... Yes, let me think for a while... Where in that once-teeming city, forsaken even by loneliness now, was that fire first lit that burned it down to ruins? From which of its blacked-out rows of windows flew the first arrows, tipped with blood? In which home wa the first candle lit? Let me think...You ask me about that country whose details now escape me. I don't remember its geography, nothing of its history. And should I visit it in memory, it would be as I would a past lover, after years, for a night, no longer restless with passion, with no fear of regret. I have reached that age when one visits the heart merely as a courtsey, the way one keeps in touch with an old neighbor. So don't question me about the heart. Just let me think

"Let Me Think" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz for Andrei Voznesensky as translated by Agha Shahid Ali

At fifteen it was easy to write poetry: Shelley the prophet, Winter here and Spring round the corner. And when the narcissi came, Truth was Beauty, Beauty simply Truth, and I, sitting by the river This made sense, at sixteen, in Kashmir where Mahjoor sang of the gul (its thorn piercing the bulbul). Our teachers taught poetry under chinars, their eyes misty with odes to autumn. And we responded to this Urdu game of moths, their everbeaten flame. At eighteen I was surprised by vers-libre. A Ph.D. from Leeds mentioned discipline, casually brought the waste-land Unawares I was caught in wars and wars, Vietnam pulling me towards suppleness of language. Death punctuated all my poems. I tried being clever, white-washed the day, exchanged it for the night, Bones my masks, Death the adolescent password. I lost my chance. Now I slant my way through rhymes, stumbling through my twenties.

("Introducing," Beloved Witness) by Agha Shahid Ali

Where perfumed rivers flow, Is the home of my beloved. Where passing breezes halt, Is the home of my beloved. Where dawn arrives on bare toes, Where night paints henna-beams on feet, Where fragrance bathes in moonlight, Is the home of my beloved. Where rays of light roam nakedly, In green forests of sandalwood. Where the flame seeks the lamp, Is the home of my beloved. Where sunsets sleep on wide waters, And the deer leap. Where tears fall for no reason, Is the home of my beloved. Where the farmer sleeps hungry, Even though the wheat is the color of my beloved, Where the wealthy ones lie in hiding, Is the home of my beloved. Where perfumed rivers flow, Is the home of my beloved. Where passing breezes halt, Is the home of my beloved.

Shiv Kumar Batalvi (trans. by Suman Kashyap)

Tum bhi mehboob mere, tum bhi ho dildar mere Ashna mujh se tum, tum bhi nahin, tum bhi nahin Khatm hai tum pe masiha nafsi, chara gari Mehram-e dard-e jigar tum bhi nahin, tum bhi nahin Jin se har daur mein chamki hai tumhari dehliz Aaj sajde wahi awara hue jate hain [You are my beloved, and you are my wellwisher You also do not have acquaintance with me, and you also do not The benevolence, the beneficence stops at you But you are not aware about the pains in my heart, and you are also not Those who have paved your way in every period Those very bowings are becoming wayward today]

-Awara Sajde [‘Wayward Supplications’] by Kafi Azmi as translated by Dr. Raj Bahadur Gour

What I can say with conviction about myself is simply that I was born in subjugated India and grew old in independent India and will die in a socialist India. These are not the ravings of a lunatic person nor the dream of a crazy idealist. Myself and my poetry have always been associated with socialism for which great struggle has been going on for a long time in India and the world over. My poetry is born out of this very conviction.

Kaifi Azmi (via sinekala)

Chand rekhaon mein, seemaon mein Zindagi qaid hai Seeta ki tarah Ram kab lauten ge maloom nahin Kash Rawan hi koi aa jata [Life is imprisoned like Sita When will Ram return, it is not known Wish at least some Ravan had returned]

Kaifi Azmi

Poetry and life are two different outpouring of the same thing; life as we usually conceive it contains what we normally accept as reality, but the spectacle of this incoherent and disorderly life can satisfy neither the poet’s talent nor the reader’s imagination ... poetry does not contain a complete reconstruction of what we call reality; we have entered a new world

Jibanananda Das

The first ten poems of this book were published at the behest of Rabindranath Tagore in Sabuj Patro Later those were reprinted in Prabashee in the “Touchtone” section. It was at that time that Sahed Sadwarthi and Apurba Chanda had discussed the poems with Sudhindranath Datta. The next fifteen poems were first published in the last decade in some little magazines in West Bengal. But Annadashankar Roy informs, he had translated those fifteen into Oriya in his youth. A certain Dean of Punjab University has intimated that those were translated and published much earlier in Gurmukhi by Bhai Vir Singh. The night Ms. Aru Dutta got the French translation of the poems no flower in the gardens of Paris hardly slept a wink. On the walls of the Church at Barok and on the plaque containing the Hamburabi Code the 26th poem of this book is scripted with an arrow-head. If that be so when in history were these poems written ? Perhaps on the hard shell of the mythological giant tortoise the deep dark water of the ocean of universal cataclysm and phosphorous and sand at a very slow pace is still busy scripting the 68th poem - the final poem of the book.

My Last Book of Poems by Manindra Gupta

Having overcome the accidents of Winter, Summer, Spring, and the Rains, I welcome at my heart’s evening the void, the null, the absolute zero No longer prey to the whimsy of the seasons, I rejoice In freedom from function, liberty from thought, lightness of death No longer wronged by the contingent, the wails of the grieving, Laughter and shrieks of the whirling months, I yield at most To the malaise of old age, to the body’s loss of humors Markings in a dead script on a calendar no longer in use In a ruined palace my moving finger points to rusty locks hanging From rows of the chained doors of long deserted chambers Dimmed is the former chiaroscuro, my heart is monochrome A late autumn landscape with gray fog shading into a pallid moon In my ears the ageless sea confirms what I already know I have for company only the void, the vacuum, the zero

To The Seasons by Buddhadev Bose

My dreams are also endless in my mind there's no tiredness at all. Yet the branches are full of a dry lament, yet the fields are full of cold frost, and there are endless tears in the sky. My life waits eagerly, is it a wait, or a mixed tune ! Ashes mix in the blue of my longing, want and fulfilment mingle in that beggarliness, the mind is accessible in the body, in the fist the far. I don't even want peace without you, I want you - there is no end to that. Krishnachura glows red, is it not a lament too ? It is the ache in my heart. There is no peace for him who knows you, never in his life, that diamond's.

-In my mind there's no tiredness at all

 ---Klanti nei, from Nam Rekechhi Komol Gandhar.