TRANSLATED FROM THE URDU BY HUZAIFA PANDIT

We, who were executed in half-dark lanes

We, who were executed in half-dark lanes
For loving the fresh flowers of your lips,
We were hung from the stiff scaffold.
Longing for the lamps of your hands
We were executed in half-dark lanes.

Faraway from our lips parched
On the scaffold,
The redness of your beryl lips went on throbbing
The ecstasy of your flowing tresses went on gushing
The silver of your hands went on scintillating

When the night of oppression
Settled in your ways
We walked on as far our weary feet could carry us
The verse of a ghazal dangling from our lips
Heart ablaze with the lamp of sorrow
Sorrow that testified to your beauty
Witness, we didn’t falter in our testimony
We who were executed in half-dark lanes.

If failure was ordained to be our destiny
Our love for you we declared insistently
Who is grieved if all the ways of desire
Led straight to the execution yards?
Picking up our flags from these killing fields
Processions of your lovers will march –
On their road of their desire, our footsteps reduced
Distances of their suffering.
For whose sake, we made universal
The legend of your beauty by forfeiting our lives.
We who were executed in the half-dark lanes.

Stay Beside Me

Stay beside me,
My murderer, my sweetheart, stay by me.
When the night drunk on blood of skies
Marches with balms of fragrance
And lances of venom,
Wailing, laughing and singing
Stomping in her blue-grey ankle bells of pain
When hearts sunk in chests
Long for, and await
Hands hidden inside cloaks.
When the gurgling melody of wine
Sobs like a toddler
Who once set sail in the ocean of agitation
Can’t be calmed and pulled ashore
Try however hard you may
When everything fails to be
When conversation refuses to flow
When the mourning night marches
With its black banners
My murderer, my sweetheart, stay beside me!

Also, read In Conversation with Swapnamoy Chakraborty, interviewed by Biswajit Panda and published in The Antonym: 

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