I am a great lover of Urdu verse – poetry, ghazals, qawwalis, anything at all. The beauty of the language is incomparable and I spend hours reading Faiz, Iqbal and several others. This qawwali, sung most beautifully by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is my favourite. Its sentiment and its poetry can move to tears.  I’ve highlighted my favourite lines.

Saqi Ki Har Nigah Pay Bal Kha Kay Pee Gaya
Lehroon Say Khailta Hoa Lehra Kay Pee Gaya
Dancing to every look of the wine-giver, I drank
Playing with the waves, I drank

Ey Rehmat-E-Tamaam Meri Har Khata Muaf
Mein Intiha-E-Shouq (Mein) Say Ghabra Kay Pee Gaya
O Lord, forgive my sins
That I was afraid, but still with great pleasure, I drank

Peta Baghair Izm Yeh Kab Thi Meri Majaal
Dar Pardah Chashm-E-Yaar Ki Shay Pa Kay Pee Gaya
That I would drink without prerogative, when did I have such courage?
With the acquiescence of my lover’s veiled eyes, I drank

Paas Rehta Hai Duur Rehta Hai
Koi Dil Mein Zaroor Rehta Hai
Close to me, far from me
Someone surely lives in my heart

Jab Say Dekha Hai Un Ki Aankhon Ko
Halka Halka Suroor Rehta Hai
Since I have seen her eyes
This mild inebriation remains with me

Aisay Rehtay Hein Koi Mere Dil Mein
Jaisay Zulmat Mein Noor Rehta Hai
She lives in my heart
Like light lives in darkness

Ub Adam Ka Yeh Haal Hai Har Waqt
Mast Rehta Hai Chuur Rehta Hai
Now is the state of this man that all the time
I remain enraptured, broken

Yeh Joh Halka Halka Saroor Hai
Yeh Teri Nazar Ka Qasoor Hai
This mild intoxication
It is the fault of your gaze

Kay Sharab Peena Sikha Diya
Tere Pyar Nai, Teri Chaah Nai
That you have taught me how to drink
With my desire, my longing for you
Teri Behki Behki Nigaah Nai
Mujhay Ik Sharabi Bana Diya…
Your flirtatious looks
Have made me a lover of wine

Sharab Kaisi, Khumaar Kaisa
Yeh Sub Tumhari Nawazishein Hein
What a drink, what a high
These are all your gifts

Pilai Hai Kiss Nazar Say Tu Ne
Kay Mujhko Apni Khabar Nahi Hai
How you have made me elated with your looks
That I am not even aware of myself

Teri Behki Behki Nigah Nai
Mujhe Ik Sharabi Bana Dia
Your flirtatious looks
Have made me a lover of wine

Sara Jahan Must, Jahan Ka Nizam Must
Din Must, Raat Must, Saher Must, Shaam Must
The whole world is exhilarated
Day, night, morning and evening
Dil Must, Sheesha Must, Sabu Must, Jaam Must
Hai Teri Chashm-E-Must Say Her Khaas-O-Aam Must
The heart is intoxicated, so is the mirror, the glass and even the wine itself
Your captivating eyes have made everything delirious

Yoon To Saqi Her Tarah Ki Tere MaiKhane Mein Hai
Woh Bhi Thori Si Jo In Aankhon K Paimane Mein Hai
Every kind of wine resides in your cellar
And then there is that look in those eyes as well
Sub Samajhta Hoon Teri Ishwa-Kari Ay Saqi
Kaam Karti Hai Nazar Naam Hai Paimane Ka.. Bus!
I understand your cleverness well
It is the fault of your gaze, but the blame is put on the wine

Teri Behki Behki Nigah Nai
Mujhe Ik Sharabi Bana Diya
Your flirtatious looks
Have made me a lover of wine

Tera Pyar Hai Meri Zindagi
Tera Pyar Hai Meri Bandagi
To love you is my life
To love you is my bondage

Tera Pyar Hai Bas Meri Zindagi,
Tera Pyar Hai Bas Meri Zindagi
To love you is my life,
To love you is my life

Na Namaz Aati Hai Mujhko, Na Wazoo Aata Hai
Sajda Kar Leta Hoon Jab Saamnay Tu Aata Hai
Not prayer nor ablution do I know
I prostrate when before me you come
Bus Meri Zindagi Tera Pyar Hai
My life is only my love for you

Mai Azal Say Banda-E-Ishq Hoon,
Mujhe Zohd-O-Kufr Ka Gham Nahin
I am a true lover
With no fear of the hereafter
Mere Sir Ko Dar Tera Mil Gaya
Mujhe Ab Talash-E-Haram Nahi
Now that my head has found your mat
No need have I to search for heaven

Meri Bandagi Hai Wo Bandagi
Jo Muqeed-E-Dair-O-Haram Nahi
My bondage is to that spot
Which is tied to no sacred place
Mera Ik Nazar Tumhein Dekhna
Ba Khuda Namaz Se Kam Nahi
My taking one look at you
By God is equal to prayer

Meri Zindagi Tera Pyar Hai
Bus Meri Zindagi Tera Pyar Hai
My life is only my love for you
My life is only my love for you

(Translation courtesy Ego Mag)

The Paris Review has published translations of previously-unpublished pieces by Rilke, called Interiors. Here is an excerpt:

You cannot hold anything against this calm and tranquil occupation: the story of Zoroaster, that of Plato, that of Jesus Christ and Columbus and Leonardo and Napoleon and many more, did need to get written. In other words, these stories wrote themselves, so to speak. Every one of this cast of characters etched a furrow in the great gray brain of the earth, and we all carry a miniature reproduction of this archetypal brain within us, like a pocket watch or the small round pill of a compass that shows where the sun rises over a worthy citizen’s belly.

Later the stories of rare women came into existence; but here a little assistance was necessary, and a logic and a mnemotechnic were invented for the geocentric primary brain that even the historians of today are still proud of. In our most recent century, which has almost died away now, people worked more and more on the paysage intime—they wanted to tell the story of the nameless individuals.
Someone finally seemed to notice that battles don’t only take place at Thermopylae or Hastings or Austerlitz, sometimes the battlefield is called Fear or Desire or Ingratitude; that not every discovery is of America; that not every invention has to arrive at gunpowder or the steam engine or the airship in order to be meaningful and, in a certain sense, fruitful. And so it has become the norm to present not true, authenticated heroes, but plausible, authentic-seeming heroes. To this end they have spent the last few decades ripping apart the heroes of the past and the usable contemporaries and putting together new, ever new possibilities from the unrecognizable pieces.

These possibilities are supposed to come across as interesting or singular human beings, at least when you look at them in the right light, from a certain angle. And people keep making these attempts, incessantly, keep manufacturing modern legitimacies that make the old measures seem moderate; they’re very happy when one of these specimens, after they attach its head not to its torso but to its right toe, clings to life for a while.

That’s how people become clever. In other words, they lay in a collection of more or less serious experiences and then have to rent an extra room to hold all the fruits of their vigorous, diligent research. When you look at it this way, of course, the rare types and unexpected nuances count most heavily. And it may indeed be that mature human beings, standing in sharp contrast to their surroundings, do experience strange things, and in the strangest way too. It is said that their “fate” is of the greatest interest, and two things are meant by this word: that which strikes them from without, and their actions and reactions when faced with these blows and impressions.

I am reading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman and enjoying it immensely. This is a line from the first book, The Northern Lights.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair.

This is one of my favourite poems, ever. Seth is such a beautiful writer of both prose and poetry.

Somewhere within your loving look I sense,
Without the least intention to deceive,
Without suspicion, without evidence,
Somewhere within your heart the heart to leave.
- Vikram Seth

They seemed to know how to blend together all that life contains, the real truth, the undeniable last word, the innermost core of all that is unbearably painful within a heart and all that is joyful, all that is loved and all that is worthy of love but remains unloved, lied to and lied about, the unimaginable depths of the soul where no other can withstand the longing and which few have the conviction to plumb, the sorrows and the indisputable rage.

- From Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam

Cavafy is one of my favourite poets. More so because I fell in love with Alexandria and his poetry is so redolent of that old-new, here-but-not-quite, not-nearly-there, salty, sweet air that permeates the beautiful seaside city. I’ve never ached as much for a city as I do for Alexandria. This poem is what I consider Cavafy’s finest. It’s so wonderfully symbolic and reminds me – as Alexandria did – that life is fleeting, history is overwhelming and the most we can do is make the best of all we have.

As you set out on the way to Ithaca
hope that the road is a long one,
filled with adventures, filled with discoveries.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them,
you won’t find such things on your way
so long as your thoughts remain lofty, and a choice
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
savage Poseidon; you won’t encounter them
unless you stow them away inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up before you.

Hope that the road is a long one.
Many may the summer mornings be
when—with what pleasure, with what joy—
you first put in to harbors new to your eyes;
may you stop at Phoenician trading posts
and there acquire the finest wares:
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and heady perfumes of every kind:
as many heady perfumes as you can.
Many Egyptian cities may you visit
that you may learn, and go on learning, from their sages.

Always in your mind keep Ithaca.
To arrive there is your destiny.
But do not hurry your trip in any way.
Better that it last for many years;
that you drop anchor at the island an old man,
rich with all you’ve gotten on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey;
without her you wouldn’t have set upon the road.
But now she has nothing left to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca didn’t deceive you.
As wise as you will have become, with so much experience,
you will understand, by then, these Ithacas; what they mean.

- Constantine Cavafy

At ten I remember summers vast as Lake
Superior, stretching to the horizon
like wheat fields in Nebraska where
the aching eye seeks something
on the horizon to attach itself.

I remember periods in school
during which I grew an inch while
leaves opened from tight buds,
lengthened, turned crimson and fell
on the trees of my bored mind.

Every day had twenty-eight hours.
Now a day has only sixteen. Each
skinny hour is leaking minutes.
Even twenty years ago, I had
time enough to loll in now and then.

That was then. Now time runs
its buzzsaw through my brain.
I barely fit inside my days.
They pinch me fore and aft
hardly room to breathe.

I want time out. I want to stop
the whirring of the clock hands
like fans gone mad. My own age
confuses me. When did I stop
being young? Time sneaks

up on you like a bicycle messenger
bearing down fast on your back
about to send you sprawling
your chin on the pavement bleeding
and you’ll never know what hit you.

- Marge Piercy

Think of a number. Double it.
Multiply that, for argument’s sake,
by some astronomical figure to find
the rate at which the universe
is speeding into pieces or how many
depleted stars are concentrated
into ravenous black holes.
Round up the answer with your
calculating mind as you try to come
to terms with zeroes lined up to infinity:
so many light-years for truth to dawn,
so many theories of dark matter,
so many millennia until night falls
on our universe and everything
on earth comes down to nothing—
like nothing on earth you could
imagine in a billion years.

Difficult to second-guess what might
happen next, what climate of fear
we have coming to us in the future.
But, over today’s horizon, May
appears in perfect working order,
seen in the best possible light;
bringing out the colour in furze bushes,
granting leaves a seasonal reprieve.
Butterflies contrive a soft landing
on extravagant polyanthus.
Grain shoots are gaining ground.
Sprays of rowan disperse scent.
And a still-gentle sun caresses
the brow of the hill: a cow
licking her newborn calf.

- Excerpts from the poem by Dennis O’Driscoll

The authority of beauty.

What kind of beauty?

Not the beauty which is linear, and requires a purging of the flesh: Beauty of contour, of bone, of profile, of silky hair and the flare of delicate nostrils. (The beauty that, after first youth, must diet, that wills itself to be thin.) This is the beauty that emerges from self-confidence, class confidence. That says, I am not born to please. I am born to be pleased.

Not that beauty, the beauty arising from privilege, from will, from artifice, but one almost as authoritative: The beauty of someone who has to fight for a place and can take nothing for granted. Beauty which strokes itself with parted full lips, inviting the touch of others. Beauty which is generous and leans toward the admirer. I can change, yes, but I want to please you.

(…)

What do you do with beauty? You admire it, you praise it, you embellish it (or try to), you display it; or you conceal it.

Could you have something supremely beautiful and not want to show it to others? Possibly, if you fear their envy, if you worry that someone will come and take it away. Someone who steals a painting from a museum or a mediaevel manuscript from a church must keep it hidden. But how deprived the thief must feel. It seems most natural to exhibit beauty, to frame it, to stage it – and hear others admire, echo your admiration.

(…)

What is beauty without a chorus, without the whispers, the sighs, the murmurs?

- From The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag

When it rains, the dead descend.
You appear, so real I can smell the rainwater in your hair,

can touch the circle I placed on your finger.
And the box that our future was wrapped in,

does the scent of happiness still linger
on the paper, the velvet, the ribbon?

Your lips, clear of the color you always wear,
are not new to me, they’re lovely and bare;

and our old argument still turns, it burns.
How soon will you forget me if I die?

By the water in my eye and the way it returns, I swear:
If I forget you, let the world die.

When it rains, the dead ascend. You disappear
where I can’t follow: into the upper air.

- Jeet Thayil

Thayil’s These errors are correct is a haunting collection of poems. This one, in particular, sears right through me. Here’s a review I had written.