Pain Poem by Muhammad Shanazar

(A poem for Narender)

O Friend! What is pain how should I describe to you,
Pain is a black streak in the transparent mirror,
A worn out wooden-beam of a deserted house,
Acrid acid mixed in the water of Ganga,
Cold congealed blood coated on the torn Anchal,
A bulge of dark night on the shut windows of evening,
A cry of silence clinging on the body of night,
A strange encroachment of darkness in the bright day,
A small bonfire of smouldering yellow leaves,
An overwhelming sheet of mist in the month of January,
Panting shadows on the walls,
A shroud of hard snow on the mountains,
Pain is a fate of the dispersing wind,
A springe buried in layers of the delicate heart,
Or an abrupt deep breathing of the chest.

O Friend! What is pain how should I describe to you,
Pain is a cry of an intense sensation,
An emerging memory at the wintry night,
Pain is a tear, pulsation and a tempest too,
An urge, a whirlwind and a main track of blood,
Let it be kept hidden in the fissures of heart,
Or far away on shores of the ocean of the past,
Pain is a poem, pain is a wound,
Childhood breathing its last on the footpath,
Stones hailing on canopies,
And flames spurting in the jungle.

O Friend! What is pain how should I describe to you,
(Since you have gone all charms have departed from the world.)
It seems as if neither spring has come,
Nor showers of monsoon have poured,
Nor laburnums have blossomed this turn,
Nor birds have chirped on boundaries of the farms,
Nor flowers have bloomed,
Nor cuckoos have sung in my house.

O Friend! What is pain how should I describe to you,
Pain is losing of the path amid the wilderness,
Extinction of some sign of the childhood,
Separation of fascinating dream from the eyes,
And annoyance of moonlight at nights of youth.

O Friend! What is pain how should I describe to you,
A dawn of beleaguering belly of a poor fellow,
A countenance of a child with marks of dried tears,
A stifled sigh in the chest of a fraught being,
A gaze of a kidnaped child,
An old-man breathing his last on some footpath,
Fledgling aspirations of a prostitute,
Pain is mixed mingled in each vein of the heart,
Gripping minds like darkness of the moonless nights.

O Friend! What is pain how should I describe to you,
A pigmy tree amid the wasteland,
A shingled route leading through a deserted valley,
Like youth of waves smashing heads against the shore,
Pain is a forsaken tale of the past,
A hope that doesn't let someone die,
Disappointment that incites to leave the world.

O Friend! What is pain how should I describe to you,
You will find the Pain concealed in sighs of the sinned,
Hidden in the eyesight of a despised lover,
Burden on the youth of a poverty stricken man,
Pain in the thoughts of a poet does melt,
It is just to be felt! It is just to be felt!

Written by Jagdish Prakash (India)
Translated by Muhammad Shanazar (Pakistan)