Taufiq Rafa The siene Chat The beautiful is beautiful anyway So why embellish it with words The eye, too long used to green And fruitful movement, is parched For a desert beneficence, is seeking Subtleties where none seems to exist For instance, in Jhelum’s eroded hills Where we had stopped for a moment to Relieve ourselves, they always remind me Of a village crone, too seamed and bedridden Yo be of value, yet somehow lingering on Still spitting out the occasional proverb. surfeit has cloyed my vision, to understand This waste, | must try and know myself ‘As | must have been once and become, And become, why even be.....even If [have to become .......... That that a stone chat ‘Almost lost again the no color background I would have missed him, but for his tail Vibrating with excitement. He hops up the slope Held in place by a slide of sunlight To a ridiculous terrace of wheat Which does not seem worth a tending Once there, to burst into song, Never Was anything so eager to survive? Intolerant of excuse, he calls This place a home, he learnt to distinguish Between the various shades of grey Till the neighborhood is riot of color, And a ragged patch of wheat sufficient Cause to be mellifluous aboutLLL And turned. For five long minutes He looked up the lane, not moving, Not saying a word, as if he would Drink in every cobble, window, And door with his difficult breath. I knew then it was his own way Of saying goodbye to this life Gaufiq Rafat Thinking of MohenjoWMaro Thinking of Mohinjodaro Alaxandria and Rome | note how time curves! Back on itself Like and acrobate This year’s harvest is late The archaic sun Has been playing Like a poem On the farmer's nerves The ink driew slowly On the half written page Who will read this? Stranger, The crumbling fort You pass in your homeAUTUMNAL 1984 © Country, now stop this quarrel with yourself and call in the spring for your gardens. A rose and a crocus for each man from north to south, and the post-winter cheer across the breadth of the land. Now as the autumn comes, it’s only a prelude to the urge of seasons which come and go and come again to lend a definition to desire. It won't be long The fog, no-colour, that looms over the tallest trees there, the shining reasons cast in doubt thereabout. 1 can see ital, almost, from this necessary distance, and hope that something will make it clear. True, the trees here as wellalamoie Hashint_s Encounter with Sirens The song of the sirens Could pierce Through everything, and the longing Of those they reduced Would have broken for stronger bonds Then chains and mast But Ulysses trusted absolutely The handful of wax and his fathom Of chains, and innocent elations Over his little stratagem Sailed out to meet the sirens Now the siren have the weapon more Fatal than song. And though such a thing Has never happened, someone might possibly Have escaped their singing; But, a When Ulysses approached them, The potent songstresses did not care To sing. Surprised no doubt. They were by the bliss on his face, Thinking of nothing but his wax, and his chains, Ulysses could not hear their silence, And though he alone did not hear them. When for a fleeting moment he saw ‘Their throat rising and falling Their breasts lifting. Their eyes in tears, And their lips half parted, He believed They were accompaniments to the air Which died unheard around them. So waving to them, triumphantly he turned and sailed on,