Daud Kamal

AN ANCIENT INDIAN COIN

Far away, beyond the glaciers of the Himalayas, and the snow-roofed home of the negligent gods, was slowly gathering a swarm
of hard, hungry savages… [HG Keene, ‘A Sketch of the History of Hindustan’]

Gazelle embossed on a lop-sided moon.

Vasanta had only been rendered insensible

By the outrage in the garden

A sadhu watches his toe-nails grow

In his Himalayan cave.

Men create their own gods

And a learned Brahmin is exempt

From all taxation

But a piece of gold

Does not take one very far

Out of the seven jade goblets

They dug up

Only one was whole.

The king’s hunting-dogs are better fed

Than most of his subjects.

Look, the Indus is choked with stars

And the glaciers are beginning to melt.

I try to calm myself

But my tongue is smothered

By its own thickness.

Solitude, silence, stone.

A RUINED MONASTERY

Boulders

Huge as the elephants

Of Porus

And on the lull

A ruined monasteries

When did the pilgrims

Stop coming.

Waterfall

And a ruptured pool

In which the sunlight

Licks its own salt-whiteness

A dusty track

Dotted

With cow dung

Every

Morning and evening

Women from a nearby village

Come here

To gossip

And fill their earthen pots.

BEIRUT

How have the music

In those eyelashes

Clotted with blood.

Flutes and cymbals

The smell of bread

Hot from the oven.

Many died

Dreaming of water

Many were burnt alive.

Shadows everywhere

The city has become

Its own monument.

This mourning

Must now cease.

Mother dry your tears.

Your sons will return.

A NARROW VALLEY

Flash-flood

In a narrow valley.

A bowl of milk

Falls

From the hands

Of a trembling child.

Mud houses collapse.

Prayers

Do not work

At times

Such as these.

LANDSCAPE

Three stepping stones

and then the stream

cascading silver

convoluted glass

A young woman

wades through knee deep

to the other side.

Fox pelts

drying in the sun

and glacier between barren mountains.

Why don't you admit

that you have forgotten .

the sky

is anchored to the trees

which cast no shadows.

they never is any reprieve…

no running away.

A long

uneven path

fogged by the nights breath.

FLOODS

How does one forgive

the treachery

of blind rivers

in water buffaloes

dissolving in the mind.

Their hut was

forty years old

they had

three wooden boxes of dowry

and a sack full of expensive rice.

At the army of relief camp

the bride to be

covers her head

while her parents

look the other way.

 Taufiq Rafaqat

KARACHI 1968

Karachi is the only city I know

where barbers solicit like whores, and papayas

Are considered fruit. sandwiched between

the desert and the sea, it swells by reclamation

and points to its belly shamelessly

a windy instant burg, it lionises

artists whose chief merit is a big mouth.

there is no weather here as we northerners

understand weather. the season telescopes

a sort of summer into a sort of winter,

topped by a mini monsoon. each new morning

brings no hope of change. generally the clouds

are sexless, mute and above our affairs.

A splitting Sky announcers a jet not rain.

No, I do not think I should come to terms

With this grey place. It shortens my breath

and pinches my eyes. On bad road automobiles

smelling each other's rare jostle their way

On the beach. A manure truck leaves its trail

At ' a. m. the whirling airport searchlight

brandishes its sword over the hushed city.

POEM FOR FAUZIA

Having come to these fields, this pond,

to brood on early death, I remain

to praise the lavishness of Nature

Other seasons maybe niggardly,

not autumn, it gives and takes

with abandon. Into its slot

shishams will one by one insert

All their green coins, while the wind

riffles its currency of rice.

Dear lovely girl, You ride the

rainbow of our prayers, and give us

strength to face the coming chill.

Shadows lengthen softly, in the seepage

reads and the nurse-like lilies stand,

rooted in coolness, and a gnarled

wildberry tree tests the water

by trailing a broken digs there.

Now acceptance settles on the mind

With the nicety of a dragonfly

And even as I flung up my arms

In an excess of pity and love,

The pebble of my presence breaks

Porcelain herons into blurred flights.

ARRIVAL OF THE MONSOON

Before the thrust of this liberating wind

Whatever is not fixed, has a place to go,

Strain northwards to the coniferous lands.

And drunk with motion, clothes on the washing line

Are raised above themselves, a flapping sheet

Turns a roof corner into a battlement.

Gliding days are over. The birds are tossed

Sideways and back, and lifted against their will

They must struggle to achieve direction.

A welcome darkness descends. Harsh contours

Dissolve, lose their prosaic condition

All the sounds we have loved are restored.

And now the rain in sudden squalls

It sweeps the street, and equally sudden

Are the naked boys paddling in the dishes.

Alive, alive, everything is alive again

Savour the rain’s coolness on lips and eyes

How madly the electric wire is swinging

From brown waters eddying round their hooves

The drenched trees rise and shake themselves

And summer ends in a flurry of drops.

THINKING OF MOHENJODARO

Thinking of Mohenjodaro

Alexander and Rome,

I note how time curves

Back upon itself

Like an acrobat.

This year’s harvest is late,

the archaic sun

has been playing

like a poem on the farmer’s nerves.

The ink dries slowly

On the half written page

Who will read this?

Stranger, the crumbling fort

You pass in your home.

WEDDING IN THE FLOOD

They are taking my girl away forever,

sobs the bride‟s mother, as the procession

forms slowly to the whine of the clarinet.

She was the shy one. How will she fare

in that cold house, among these strangers?

This has been a long and difficult day.

The rain nearly ruined everything,

but at the crucial time, when lunch was ready,

it mercifully stopped. It is drizzling again

as they help the bride into the palankeen.

The girl has been licking too many pots.

Two sturdy lads carrying the dowry

(a cot, a looking glass, a tin-trunk,

beautifully painted in grey and blue)

lead the way, followed by a foursome

bearing the palankeen on their shoulders.

Now even the stragglers are out of view.

I like the look of her hennaed hands,

gloats the bridegroom, as he glimpses

her slim fingers gripping the palankeen’s side.

If only her face matches her hands,

and she gives me no mother-in-law problems,

I.ll forgive her the cot and the trunk

and looking-glass. Will the rain never stop?

It was my luck to get a pot-licking wench.

Everything depends on the ferryman now.

It is dark in the palankeen, thinks the bride,

and the roof is leaking. Even my feet are wet.

Not a familiar face around me

as I peep through the curtains. I‟m cold and scared.

The rain will ruin cot, trunk, and looking-glass.

What sort of a man is my husband?

They would hurry, but their feet are slipping,

and there is a swollen river to cross.

They might have given a bullock at least,

grumbles the bridegroom‟s father; a couple of oxen

would have come in handy at the next ploughing.

Instead, we are landed with

a cot, a tin trunk, and a looking-glass,

all the things that she will use!

Dear God, how the rain is coming down.

The silly girl‟s been licking too many pots.

I did not like the look of the river

when we crossed it this morning.

Come back before three, the ferryman said,

or you‟ll not find me here. I hope

he waits. We are late by an hour,

or perhaps two. But whoever heard

of a marriage party arriving on time?

The light is poor, and the paths treacherous,

but it is the river I most of all fear. 51

Bridegroom and bride and parents and all,

the ferryman waits; he knows you will come,

for there is no other way to cross,

and a wedding party always pays extra.

The river is rising, so quickly aboard

with your cot, tin trunk, and looking-glass,

that the long homeward journey can begin.

Who has seen such a brown and angry river

or can find words for the way the ferry

saws this way and that, and then disgorges

its screaming load? The clarinet fills with water.

Oh what a consummation is here:

The father tossed on the horns of the waves,

and full thirty garlands are bobbing past

the bridegroom heaved on the heaving tide,

and in an eddy, among the willows downstream,

the coy bride is truly wedded at last.