Changing

In this teeming city, is there none
Who might recognize me, walking,
Calling: Hey, you, madman!
We two might embrace just there,
Forgetting our place, surroundings,
To swear, laugh, scuffle,
Sit in the shade of some nearby tree,
Listening, talking, for hours.
And in this market of pristine souls
This priceless life of mine
Might, for a day, change.


Translation of "Tabdili," in Sar-o-Saman (Bombay: Rakhshanda Kitab Ghar, 1983). Translation copyright 2010 by M.A.R. Habib. All rights reserved.
 

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Poetry From the November 2010 issue: Tablet and Pen: Writing from the Modern Middle East

Akhtar Ul-ImanAkhtar Ul-Iman

Akhtar ul-Iman  was born in 1915 in Uttar Pradesh, India. After earning his MA from Aligarh University, he wrote screenplays and became a film director. Though he was a member of the Progressive Writers' Association, his verse resists any ideological regimentation and is individualistic in its portrayal of character and its original treatment of human experience, using colloquial language. He was a pioneer of modernism in Urdu and a close friend of the modernist poet Miraji. His collected poems were published as Sar-o-Saman in 1983. He died in 1996.

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Translated from UrduUrdu by M. A. R. HabibM. A. R. Habib

Rafey Habib is Professor of English at Rutgers University. He is the author of seven books, the latest of which are Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and Shades of Islam: Poems for a New Century (Kube Publishing, 2010).

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