Before You Came.. ~ Faiz Ahmed Faiz

 

Faiz Ahmed Faiz with Alys Faiz

Before you came things were just what they were:
the road precisely a road, the horizon fixed,
the limit of what could be seen,
a glass of wine was no more than a glass of wine.

With you the world took on the spectrum
radiating from my heart: your eyes gold
as they open to me, slate the color
that falls each time I lost all hope.

With your advent roses burst into flame:
you were the artist of dried-up leaves, sorceress
who flicked her wrist to change dust into soot.
You lacquered the night black.

As for the sky, the road, the cup of wine:
one was my tear-drenched shirt,
the other an aching nerve,
the third a mirror that never reflected the same thing.

Now you are here again—stay with me.
This time things will fall into place;
the road can be the road,
the sky nothing but sky;
the glass of wine, as it should be, the glass of wine.

~ Faiz Ahmed Faiz 

(1911 ~ 1984)

Translated from Urdu by Naomi Lazard

Hilda Hilst : Nameless Songs

 

Hilda Hilst

May this love neither blind me nor follow me.

And may it never notice me.

May it spare me from being pursued

And from torment.

From only being so that he knows me.

May the gaze not lose itself among the tulips

Because such perfect forms of beauty

Spring from the glare of shadows.

And my Lord inhabits the glimmering dark

From a clutter of ivies on a high wall.

 

May his love only make me discontent

And tired of tiredness. And may I

Shrink before so many weaknesses. Small and soft

Like spiders and ants.

 

May this love see me only in parting.

~ Hilda Hilst

(1930 ~ 2004)

(Translated by Lavinia Saad)