Afsar
(Translation from Telugu: Afsar and Shamala Gallagher)
Afsar has published four poetry books in his home language, Telugu and well-translated into English and Hindi languages. Now teaching South Asian literatures and cultures at the University of Texas at Austin, Afsar’s poetry in translation “Evening with a Sufi” is ready for the press. Afsar has a recent publication “The Festival of pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India,” with the Oxford university Press, USA.
In your final rest
on a rope-cot
were you still dreaming
of a piece of bread?
Beloved one,
we the people
of this country
of that country
can make anything
but a piece of bread
for you –
*
Your death now
is dream – forgotten.
Stingy dream, secret,
yesterday, the day
before, or early dawn
of some endless night,
snatched from
a broken sleep
like a cut thread
(Says Amma: don’t
forget the early
dawn dreams as they
might become real)
*
One festival
of breads
you drank the last drop
of sweet kheer
at my home,
sweet kheer slipped
into your beard –
*
So said the Prophet:
“All my dreams
are inevitable
truths”
and squeezed his body
into a qibla
and swallowed the poison
in Fatima’s womb
and then slipped away
into his dream
that was like knowing –
Then what was left?
One Karbala
bodies piled on bodies.
And from her birth pangs
from her broken sleep
Fatima began to broom the hurt field
with her braid.
*
When you poured your pain
into your pipe of shehnai –
did I ever tell you
all my history is a broken sleep
a shattered
genderless dream that multiplies –
*
Your dream of bread
is not far from her battlefield
anymore.
Your body at last on the rope-cot,
the last pinning glance of the war –
they are the same dream
one restlessness, one violent shriek
this is what
I am now –
*
When you left,
the shehnai turned alone
into her dark corner
and sang to herself
beating and beating
the ceaseless tune
of the dream you left
orphaned –
(Illustration – Sourav Dey)
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