Fugitive Shadows: “Banaras” and Other Poems

Manu Parekh. Untitled. Banaras Ghat. Courtesy: Christie’s

Riyaz Latif
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Banaras

nomadic spirits of Time
from the lips of your stone-ghats,
emerging as sounds of epochs,
become one with quenched waters –
sprouting from your breath’s pathways
streets in streets in streets squeezed
as though someone had woven veins’ snare
with undying roving where
no journey would be there…
journey is but an expanse
journey is but a synapse
here itself is being
here itself is nonbeing
through this synapse
through this expanse
the water that flows as possibility
into it have all dreamily wafted
the relics of their antiquity
all have begun to adorn
on your horizon their sky-brushing solitude,
have begun to incant solitude’s raga…
Sacrosanct Wasteland!
Epicenter of Bodies!
In the fathomless icy corner of your soul
Ages go on defecating
Attaining a charming death,
all your abstract demeanors, Banaras,
persevere to live!

Original: “Banaras,” in Hindasa Be-khwaab Raton Ka (2006), pp. 29-30.

Banaras: Odors

Fire, Water Earth –an arc!
heads aloft, they snuffle the dust
of a meaningless eternity –
kissing the foreheads of these ghats
each moment
all faces of water have rotted –
glued to the aged shores,
perpetuity reposing
in the eye of a half-burnt pyre
now demands:
“In the dust-lanes,
how long, how long,
shall Bengali sweets, attars,
and refuse of drains,
arm in arm, embracing,
keep clenching the unruly breath-order
of a populace pissing on roads?”
from the palm of an anonymous decrepit manor
from the scarlet squirts of a juicy paan
how shall I gather the aromas of
days and nights?
how shall I gather
the barrenness of occult faces,
the surfeit of odors?
the antiquity of each odor
that resides in temple-chants,
in the platter of prayer-rituals,
in sounds, in charms,
in permanence, in nothingness…
what all flickers beyond
the vista of each odor!
Time, manifest in Star TV, lures us
God colonizes a world on computer screens
Say, how many more souls shall you forward through email?
for there is a concoction
of estranged flavors in my Being –
Banaras has shed all clothes in my nostrils!

Original: “Banaras Ki Bu,” in Hindasa Be-khwaab Raton Ka (2006), pp. 31-32. (2006), pp. 29-30.

Caravaggio’s Angels

when
packing tempests of seven heavens
in the coquetry of tiny, soft, gentle forms
we have descended
who has seen us fall into Time?
all bound in the embrace of four dimensions;
the trumpet, the fire;
lament of our wings;
the only ascending continuity with
the derelict worlds of the above…
in the abundance of our graceful twirls
we are curved over histories of lands, of Time
stepping out of imagination; out of the meaning of hues;
in this arrested air
we herald arid messages voicing arrival of gods
we have come
squandering empires of grass and dew;
in our embrace
we have
brought itinerant skies of the eternal darkness of the heart

Original: “Karavajioke Farishte,” in Adam Taraash (2016), pp. 26-27. The poem attempts to engage with the lyrical spirit of the angels and cherubim so assiduously depicted in the oeuvre of the renowned Italian Baroque painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610).

Expanse

each thing as if had grown distant to me
cannot recall the names
of winds,
of worlds,
on the unborn axis of my meaning
with whose eyes shall I weep my eyes?
the loneliness of my words
in whose lips’ disavowal
shall I bury?

Original: “Fasla,” in Adam Taraash (2016), p. 62.

Soap

in peregrinations of two worlds
aroma through aroma my lips
have brushed past radiant breasts,
past abodes of dense nights beneath the navel
I too am intimate
with the blind splendor of wet skin;
chafing incessantly against
stormy nooks and twists of bodies
each moment I too have relinquished life…
turning my existence to foam
I rinse dreams of clay
In the spheres of your nuclei
I plant a crystal firmament
In the eyes of tempestuous pores
I forfeit my face

Original: “Sabun,” in Adam Taraash (2016), p. 55.

In Memory of Future

the eye of my past, future
and this, my evidence:
the droplet which was an ocean once
these winds that were once breaths
and the solitude of this tree
which someday shall soak in the waters of my voice
the eye of my past, future
and this, my evidence:
roving through Time unborn
I shall slumber in its history
If I was, then I shall be

Original: “Mustaqbil Ki Yaad Mein,” in Adam Taraash (2016), p. 59.

In Poetry’s Dark Nights

in poetry’s dark nights
from the whispers of two hands
from the misty frontier of lips
from the covert songs of faces
from the vanished empires of feet
from the spread arms of nuclei
an ocean has raged down—

Original: “Nazmon Ki Kali Raton Mein,” in Adam Taraash (2016), p. 13.

Lane Number Three

if you ever go
tread gently…
in lane number three
is the grave of a tiny sparrow
in whose wings we
have interred the flights of our childhood
the earth of the grave is moist still
in which rests us boys’ world of errant fantasy –

in the winding coiling breaths of lane number three
were shrouded so many Shabbirs!
one Shabbir “Damo”
one Shabbir “Paao”
one Shabbir “Pappi”
and one Shabbir “Mee”
Aliyo Badru where is he now?
each one now vanished
in true or counterfeit graves
and on the nook of lane number three
in the eyes of forlorn winds
wander long-vanished faces
in whose circle within circle encompassment
the flapping of the sparrow’s wings
comes afar to meet me
outside its grave –

Original: “Teen Number Ki Gali,” in Adam Taraash (2016), pp. 17-18.

His Banter

at the outset I had said as you squeeze forever the hues of the Almighty’s eyes in identical manner voice from our caverns barren hushed butterfly of trees in wild passion of deserts planets each gorgeous and beautiful in its dust homeless we had been there we too had been summoned how delectable he has prepared the biryani today what is it to Man he will come along for the appeasement of his sulking belly in the palm of winds horizons my lord I wander having snapped water flow’s every stranger branch one instant this our existence our ecstasy so bazaars peppers wilderness are seen in flight asleep in the spiraling of stars conspiracies’ ring-masters’ scimitars and shields are a sham and I am stressing that biryani dal and rice we carried on devouring the colorfulness of the grave and the arms too are beginning to ache on each secret’s withered forehead for at the outset I had said river ocean tree in the very same garments a million births salutations there is such munificence from my lord everything else here is a mirage…

Original: “Uski Batein,” in Adam Taraash (2016), p. 24.This poem is dedicated to a man who used to stay in the old neighborhood where I grew up. In people’s estimation, he had lost his mental equilibrium; he was veritably deranged. Whatever the case might be, the enigmatic shadow of his eccentric, cryptic, incoherent discourse has always remained with me. In that sense, this poem, while making an affected move to reach the inner self of that person, is a virtually unsuccessful attempt at clothing his utterances with an inadequate, imitative verse-garment.

Abstract Chant—3

the heritage of tears
fluid time
turns silently
in the bosom a wheel of hushed winds
leaves sprouted on voices again
arose hands fate palm woods
rivers deserts in themselves
on the finger died all civilizations!

Original: “Tajridi Naghma-3,” in Adam Taraash (2016), p. 34

Abstract Chant—4

from fugitive shadows
leaf leaf
thought-branches
drip, overflow,
from the eyes of winds
images from which
I smell the stench
of deceased mirrors

Original: “Tajridi Naghma-4,” in Adam Taraash (2016), p. 35

Exoneration

forgive me
grief-seared faces of air!
for I have not yet uncovered
the rim of your sky-within-sky visages –
forgive me
silhouettes of stars!
for as yet I have remained inadequate
in inhabiting the decrepit atoms of your darkness –
I have flowed solitary from the eyes of absence –
forgive me
love-harboring mirages!
for I have come to reside in your arms
resembling forlorn voices of oceans
who does my silence seek?
forgive me
for as yet I have not been able to know that –
forgive me
all things clasped in the shackles of eternity!
for I have been sowed as thirst
in the droplet of Time
have been wept from the eyes of ages –
I am the vista of the moment of the beyond
I am a contemporary of butterflies’ wings, of winds, of God!

Original: “Ma’azarat,” in Adam Taraash (2016), pp. 50-51.

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Notes:

Riyaz Latif  holds a doctoral degree in art history with a primary concentration on premodern Maghrib (North Africa), and the Mediterranean basin. After a postdoctoral fellowship with the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the MIT, he taught at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, USA. After his return to India in the summer of 2017, he has been working as an independent scholar, and will join the faculty of FLAME University near Pune as associate professor of art history.

He emerged as a noteworthy voice in Urdu poetry during the last decade of the twentieth century, and his poems have been published in reputed Urdu literary journals of India & Pakistan. Along with two collections of Urdu poetry, Hindasa Be-Khwaab Raton Ka (2006) and ‘Adam Taraash (2016), as well as a book of translations into Urdu from European poetry, titled Mera Khoya Awazah (2014), he has published a number of articles, and has translated Urdu poetry and prose into English, most of which can be found in the Annual of Urdu Studies. His works in progress – academic essays, personal reflections, poems, translations – center on composite dimensions of literature and culture, as well as art and architectural history. His book manuscript, titled Ornate Visions of Knowledge and Power: the Formation of Marinid Madrasas in Maghrib al-Aqsa, is under review for publication.