Our City

This city of ours is strange:
In the nights
It whispers as we walk its streets
It calls us, shows its wounds
Like secrets of a heart

Windows closed
Alleys silent
Run-down walls
Doors sealed
In its houses, corpses have stayed for years
Renting

Translation of "Apna Shahr." 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

Makhdum MoinuddinMakhdum Moinuddin

Makhdum Mohiuddin was born in 1908 in Hyderabad Deccan. He obtained his MA from Osmania University. As a communist, he was committed to revolutionary change and  suffered imprisonment for his activism. He was known as the "poet of the revolution." He was one of the founders of the Progressive Writers' Association, and his poems enjoyed great popularity. His best known collection was Bisat-e-Raqs (The Dance Floor), which contains his two volumes Surkh Savera (The Red Dawn, 1944), and Gul-e-Tar (The Dew-drenched Rose, 1961). He died in 1969.

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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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