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New translations of Parveen Shakir
Their glossaries do not contain
The meanings of the paths
Upon which my words take me
I am dumb to the sanctity of words and can only hold
converse
With the solitude of walls or with my own shadowÂ
A flickr contact has sent new translations of Parveen Shakir’s poems. The nine poems translated are from the latter phase of Parveen Shakir’s poetry where she is a serious, troubled working woman, burdened by her early successes in life and the personal tragedies that she encountered.
In a way, this phase of her poetry has been less studied. Shakir to most Urdu poetry readers is best known for her early works that continue to be bestsellers for their fresh and uninhibited confessions of love, vulnerability and sexual tension.
However, her later poetry challenged several constructs - of women poets’ persona and treatment, of working women’s little private hells in her country and difficult political and social subjects.
For instance in a poem entitled Advice, her attitude to love is almost dark:
Our love has died its clinical death!
How much longer can this fake respirator
Of excuses and diversions
Keep it alive
It is better
To switch off the plugs of our hypocrisy
And let a beautiful emotion die in dignity!
I had posted Tomato Ketchup earlier. RQ has also translated it. This is a moving poem, cynical in parts and loudly political as well. In effect, it brings out the ugliness of the literary scene when it comes to the objectification of female poets.
As such Sara Shagufta
Made few enemies
And because she did not believe
In offering explanations
She had already become the sister in-law of them all
Before she became a writer’s wife
Every Tom, Dick and Harry claimed
That she had slept with him
From dawn to dusk
Every unemployed hack-writer in the city
Buzzed around her
Even those
Who had jobs to go to
Would leave their tatty files and worn-out wives
And let her play in their hands
(Oblivious of electricity bills, children’s school fees and
the wife’s medicine
For these were concerns
Of the lesser mortals)
And this one on the way to the top in the Pakistani civil service, where her senior officer chides her for being a poet almost telling her that like an appendix the poet in her needs a surgery.Further elaborating this theme, she writes:
Without loss of lips, eyes, ears and brains
Nobody can become, a Federal Secretary!’
barmy diplomats
But I think he must’ve read my mind or facial expressions
That this fool is content merely to remain a Local poet
Disheartened he permitted me
To take my leave for the day
And the fool I returned to my office
Having found inspiration for a new poem
Well aware of a possible entry in red
In my A. C. R.*
July 16th, 2007 at 3:32 am
[...] source on Shakir with some more translations can be found here. * Annual Confidential Report Full entry here >> This entry is filed under Poetry, Urdu, Arts & Culture, All My Posts, Urdu Literature, On [...]
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