““In my eyes, Zohra is a metaphor for the beauty and stupefying absence of one’s own soul or perhaps of its awaited Coming. You may also call it a symbol but then there is only the distance of a thin sheet of paper between them” —Razi Mujtaba
Asif Raza
{Translated from Urdu by the author)
Zohra Devi
As when a finger is laid on
A reverberating string,
And at once life’s tumult is stilled.
A pregnant silence stretches
From horizon to horizon—
She is ready to reveal herself!
The cosmos is all ears!
The sky awaits, with its blue tent pitched,
To welcome her.
The image that is focused
By the beams of light
Upon the retina
Is that of a hazy figure,
Standing motionless
On a supernal pathway;
However, the next moment
She is dissolved in the dispersing light.
The cloud that was ablaze
Upon her arrival
Has now darkened.
Now once again
The same old vile earth under our feet
And the same old sordid sky above.
Day and night
The same indignities
And same torture
Upon the rack of existence.
Zohra Devi
Snow is melting in the mountains.
Self-exiled from hot regions,
The waterfowls,
Are now returning home.
But I, leaving my home behind,
Voyage to you
Zohra devi.
At the frontier of your realm,
I see mounds of frozen snow:
Huge ice boulders obstruct my way.
A valley veiled by fog.
I call you out aloud;
But the mountains return my call to me.
The silence that girds your domain terrifies me.
A snowy peak on the distant horizon
Neither eludes my eyes nor draws near.
The blue light flashing from behind the peak!
Is that you beckoning to me?
Enraptured by your unearthly vision
I have disowned the world,
And have come seeking for you.
However, I shudder to think____
That you may not be just a phantom
Of my waking dream.
Zohra Devi
In the flash of lightning, I have seen
The serrated top of your parapet walls.
A demon figure, clothed in dark
Keeps vigil at your palace gate.
Scattered on the sky.
Soulless,
The stars.
Upon this craggy pass,
The night has clamped its iron will.
With my lacerated hands
I climb the unending ladder
Of rocky steps.
Are you resting, peaceably,
In your chamber of mirrored walls?
Or, having spurned your empyrean dungeon,
Already descended to the valley down below?
Where, in a forest of weeping willows,
Hiding your pale face in your hands you sit
Shaking with sobs?
Zohra Devi
Goddess of Infinite love,
Yesterday, when from my blinding sight
I lifted the veil of sight
I saw shafts of light shooting
From your celestial form___
They were illuminating
All dark spaces of the world.
Zohra devi!
I saw you swinging in the surging ocean waves
And your bright colors blooming.
In the bouquet of the sunset glow,
I saw your luminous shadow,
Falling on all the shining surfaces of the world
And your face beaming in the rising river.
Zohra devi, I saw the sea waves,
With their flowing curves
Mirroring the lure of your perfect form.
And beyond the mountain chain.
Your figure dissolving in the sunset glow.
I felt the touch of your hot breath
In a passing gust of summer wind.
And heard your hurried whisper
In the rushing spring waters.
But alas! Today,
The water-swings of the ocean are empty.
And from the mirror of the rising river is missing
Your radiant face.
I only see a whirl of icy wind
And vanishing in it
A dark shadow.
Zohra Devi
I do believe that she who has been traversing
Long distances across the vast spaces____
Has now arrived.
With her nimble feet
Stepping on sun rays, moonbeams and, stars
True to her promise
She has arrived.
I recognize, borne on the air,
And diffusing far and wide
Perfume of her attire.
With my own eyes
In the flash of lightning, I did glimpse,
Her flitting form.
I do believe,
She has arrived.
Right now she is tending to
Her uncut meadows and her neglected gardens;
Swishing her flowery wand,
She is fertilizing flowers
With puffs of stamen powder,
And with her magic touch
Steeping the yellow of the leaves in green.
But alas,
She has evaded me again!
In the far-flung dark spaces
Starry islands show themselves and shimmer.
The icy breath of wind tells me,
That she has left.
I can hear the sound of her hurrying feet.
Heaven’s arch has darkened.
Deep inside the dark forest,
I hear a high-pitched scream.
Zohra Devi
The doors of day and night
Open and shut,
But do not frame her form.
I press my ears to the ground
To catch the sound of her footfall
But the faint reverberations that I hear
Tell me that she is countless miles away.
I know her emergence will not be bounded by space:
She will show up from all sides all at once.
At that moment,
The cosmic spheres will pause amidst their orbits.
See, how I sit in wait for you,
With mystic patterns
Painted on my door panels and walls!
Like my heart,
My house is your temple too,
Goddess of beauty___
And Goddess of love____
If it is not unbecoming of you,
Condescend to visit me
And, if you would,
Stay awhile someday.
Zohra Devi
Callous Goddess
Of harsh countenance___
Friend and foe___
In what dimension do you sit in seclusion?
I wait for you
Break your silence, speak!
Reveal yourself to me!
Lift the heavy veil that hides you from my sight
And move close to me
So that I may hold your snow-white feet
In my trembling hands___
To bathe them with my tears,
And thereby, annihilating my sordid self___
With all its vanity and pride___
Consecrate my life to you.
Zohra Devi
You who dwell in an unknown world,
With my eyes that are losing their sight
I search for you
In the lit up regions of the sky.
I have lost the warmth
That once your flashing vision
Had breathed into me.
Now the sunray that touches me
Shivers with cold.
Deliver me from the claws of my timeless winter
Zohra,
Take me with you
To that dominion of nihility
Which is your everlasting domicile.
Zohra Devi
When an auspicious moment
Like a dewdrop from the azure sky
Falls on your lips,
And blooms a golden flower there,
When the wind on its gossamer wings,
Carries its fragrance, like good tidings, far and wide
And when you call out aloud my name particularly
Then would I, submitting to you
Step forward and be recognized?
Or would I,
Daunted by your laughing eyes,
Step back in fright?
I fear that moment, goddess Zohra
When you may just stand and watch
As right before your laughing eyes
My dark shadow
Devours me entirely.
Zohra Devi
Was it a mistake of mine
That I have been searching for her
In gardens, meadows, and mountains
And in starry heavens?
Should I have been looking for her
In busy streets and market squares?
But I dread the thought—–
If she ever comes down from her heavenly height
Will she be able to endure the fall?
Zohra devi!
Never come down!
From your transcendental realm of forms,
Because this abject world is not worthy of you.
Do not lift the veil that hides you from my sight,
For you are divine only,
As long as you stay,
From me,
A world away.
Zohra Devi
Yesterday in a milling crowd
I spotted an unearthly face
Which threw the palpitations of my heart in disarray:
Wrapped in a dirty tattered sheet
A body glowing like pure gold!
Hastily when I caught up with her,
Walking beside her shoulder to shoulder,
She abruptly turned her face towards me—
Blinded, as if the sun had flashed full in my face,
I raised my hand to shade my eyes,
But in that instant
She had vanished in the milling crowd
(Like a wave of crystalline water
Into a muddy flow).
Deep in my heart,
A question like a dagger turns:
That ethereal figure clothed in rags___
Walking down the crowded street___
Could she have been my Zohra devi?
*****
An Afterword
“In their multidimensionality and density of meaning, Asif Raza’s poems always on front their reader with myriad possibilities of exegesis. This point is well-illustrated by his series of poems titled “Zohra Devi. Take for example the second one of the series:
Snow is melting in the mountains
Self-exiled from hot regions
The waterfowls
Are now returning home.
But I, leaving my home behind
Voyage to you
Zohra Devi!
[…]
The poem encompasses myriad worlds. For instance, of the birds which migrate from the hot to the cold world, and from the latter to the former. However, there’s also one that is unique to them, that is, of the space which they often traverse for weeks on, and during this long odyssey lose their lives too. The title of the poem also suggests myriad worlds. In “Zohra devi” the appellation “devi” seems to be evoking the image of a ‘raqqasa’ (a lady dancer) or a ‘mughannia’ (songstress). If that is the case, then one is bound to think of the goddess Venus of Roman mythology. In our orient, Venus is called ‘Zohra”, “raqqasa e Falak” or “Looli e Falak” (the dancer on the sky). In Greek mythology, she is the goddess of beauty and love (especially erotic love). In our tradition, Zohra is also the dancer who drove the angels Haroot and Maroot to fall madly fall in love with her. It is also possible to regard her as the protagonist’s (or the poet’s) beloved, a real woman in flesh and blood, for whom he uses the vocative “devi”.
In any case (whether she is a goddess or a beloved in flesh and blood, a fictitious being or a mirage of the protagonist’s imagination), she is such a power-wielding figure that the protagonist sees her manifested as a snowy peak with a blue light shimmering behind it. But the protagonist who has abandoned his world to find her is dogged by doubt at each moment (“Is that you beckoning to me?). Reaching its pinnacle, this doubt turns into dread:
I dread the thought
That you may not be just a phantom,
Of my waking dream.
Even though the possibility remains that the protagonist or one who desperately searches for her, trekking through forests, clambering mountains, and crossing deserts, may yet find her but Asif Raza never actualizes this possibility. It is his great merit that he leaves us only with Zohra, a goddess, a star, a raqqasa, or a woman in flesh and blood. “
— Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
********
Notes --The Afterword is a translated abstract from Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s Foreword to Asif Raza’s collection of poems in Urdu titled Aaene Ke Zindani which was published in Delhi, India under his tutelage. --The version above translated by the author is from his unpublished collection of poems “Whispers from the Shadow Side.”
Razi Mujtaba is a well-known literary critic and poet, who after his retirement from a long career in banking in Pakistan and abroad, is domiciled in Karachi. His publications include: five volumes of Urdu poetry, a Paris travelogue, translations of Camus’ last novel "The First Man" and Simone de Beauvoir’s "A Very Easy Death" from original French into Urdu, along with a voluminous two-part work in literary criticism that encompasses both Urdu and Western literature, namely "Jadeed Adab Ka Tanazur" (The Perspective of Modern Literature)
Asif Raza writes poetry in Urdu and translates many of them into English. His poems have been published in several literary journals in India and Pakistan. Several of his original poems as well as his English translations of them were published in the now defunct bilingual journal, Annual of Urdu Studies, University of Wisconsin. He has authored three collections of poems: Bujhe Rangon ki Raunaq (Splendor of Faded colors), Tanhai ke Tehwar(Festivals of Solitude) and AaeeneKeZindani (Captives of the Mirror) published in two editions, the first one in Delhi, India (under the supervision of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, who also wrote its foreword) and the other in Karachi, Pakistan. Asif Raza came to the U.S. in 1975 on a fellowship. After a doctorate in Sociology, he taught at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb and a senior college in Texas. He lives in Tyler, Texas
More by Asif Raza in The Beacon An Epistolary Review of S. R. Faruqi’s Novel Tremors of the Soul: On Translation and Poetic Vision Reading “At a Window, Waiting for the Starlings” CONVERSATION WITHOUT MAPS ARCH OF MEMORIES and other poems
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