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Dear Friends,

First off, I have a correction to the April 5 poem-a-day: It turns out that the current year is 2010, not 2261, and therefore Kozan Ichikyo’s 1360 verse has not been remembered “over 900 years later” — at least not yet. My apologies for the error; I switched monks on you at the last minute and failed to update that figure!

Now, today’s poem: comes to us from Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a prominent figure in Punjabi literature and politics and a best-selling modern Urdu poet in both India and Pakistan. This translation is by Naomi Lazard, who collaborated with Faiz to refine her translations of his selected works until his death in 1984.

Be Near Me

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—
At this hour when night comes down,
When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes
With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,
When it comes with cries of lamentation,
                        with laughter with songs;
Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.
At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,
Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil
For hands still enfolded in sleeves;
When wine being poured makes the sound
                        of inconsolable children
            who, though you try with all your heart,
                        cannot be soothed.
When whatever you want to do cannot be done,
When nothing is of any use;
—At this hour when night comes down,
When night comes, dragging its long face,
                        dressed in mourning,
Be with me,
My tormenter, my love, be near me.

Okay, now I’m going to do two things to you:

1) I’m going to switch translators on you. I tend to prefer Naomi Lazard’s translations of Faiz’s works. However, partly as an excerise in experiencing just how much of a different feel two translators can give you for a poem, I’m also including a more recent translation by the Kashmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali below.

2) I’m going to tell you something about the address “my love.” Addressing a poem to “my love” or “the Belovéd” (depending on your translation) is a staple of Urdu poetic tradition, and often carries meanings of lover or dear friend and of God. In addition to those meanings, Agha Shahid Ali makes a compelling argument that Faiz also intends to invoke a political meaning of “the Movement” or Marxist revolution for “the Belovéd.” Ali writes, “The reader begins to infer, through a highly sensuous language, that waiting for the revolution can be as agonizing and intoxicating as waiting for one’s lover.”

So here we go with translation number two:

Be Near Me

You who demolish me, you whom I love,
be near me. Remain near me when evening,
drunk on the blood of the skies,
becomes night, in its one hand
a perfumed balm, in the other
a sword sheathed in the diamond of stars.

Be near me when night laments or sings,
or when it begins to dance,
its steel-blue anklets ringing with grief.

Be here when longings, long submerged
in the heart’s waters, resurface
and everyone begins to look:
Where is the assassin? In whose sleeve
is hidden the redeeming knife?

And when wine, as it is poured, is the sobbing
of children whom nothing will console—
when nothing holds,
when nothing is:
at that dark hour when night mourns,
be near me, my destroyer, my lover,
be near me.

So which translation do you prefer? Do you think which version you read first impacts that feeling? Can anyone speak to how each translation compares to the original (below)?

Does the poem read differently to you once the thought is planted that “the Belovéd” could mean “the movement” or “the revolution”? Did you infer, or do you think you could have inferred, that meaning in the translation or in the original without it having been suggested?

If you’re not quite quenched, see Faiz’s “Before You Came” for one more glass of wine and “When Autumn Came” to let one bird sing.

Best,
Ellen

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going —
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

Hi Friends,

There are many accounts of Zen Buddhist monks who predicted the timing of their own deaths and then faced their passing with absolute calm. In 1360, at the age of seventy-seven, Kozan Ichikyo is said to have written this poem on the morning of his death, laid down his brush, and died sitting upright. Just a few days before, he had called his pupils together, ordered them to bury him without ceremony, and forbade them to hold services in his memory. The pupils obeyed — in part; Ichikyo’s verse remembers him centuries later.

This translation comes from the anthology Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death compiled by Yoel Hoffmann, a professor of Eastern Philosophy and Literature at Tel-Aviv University and Kyoto University.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, I am sending out one poem per day for the duration of the month. To learn more about National Poetry Month, visit www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Best,
Ellen

Correction Note from the next day’s poem-a-day: Dear Friends, First off, I have a correction to the April 5 poem-a-day: It turns out that the current year is 2010, not 2261, and therefore Kozan Ichikyo’s 1360 verse has not been remembered “over 900 years later” — at least not yet. My apologies for the error; I switched monks on you at the last minute and failed to update that figure!