"Ash'ar" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

It would indeed be pompous and pretentious of me if I tried to introduce Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Who doesn't know him? It's probable that one may not have read him but I doubt if there is a single educated person in the Indian sub-continent with even a passing interest in poetry who hasn't heard of him. Suffice it to say that he is regarded as Pakistan's greatest poet, one of the last practitioners of the glorious tradition of Urdu poetry writing that included such greats as Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Assadullah Khan Ghalib, Bahadur Shah Zafar and Mohammad Iqbal. His poetry is much noted for its secular and socialist content. But he has also composed such gems as "Aaye kuch abr kuch sharaab aaye", sung beautifully by the Ghazal King Mehdi Hasan. As I write (rather type), I have before me a gem of a book Poems by Faiz, translated with an introduction and notes by V.G. Kiernan published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi (2007). Kiernan has been a close friend of Faiz and the translations are approved by the poet. I could post all his poems on this blog, because they excel each other in quality and it is difficult to make a choice. However, I have chosen the very first poem in the collection. It's called "Ash'ar" and appears in Naqsh-e-faryadi, translated as Remonstrance or 'Complaining Image'. The poem in its original goes like this:

Raat yun dil mein teri khoi hui yaad aayee
Jaise viraane mein chupke-se bahaar aajaaye
Jaise sahraaon mein haule-se chale baad-e-naseem
Jaise beemaar ko be-vajh qaraar aajaaye.

Now I present to you Kiernan's translation of it. He translates it in two different ways. The first is titled "Last Night" and goes like this:

Last night your faded memory filled my heart
Like spring's calm advent in the wilderness,
Like the soft desert footfalls of the breeze,
Like peace somehow coming to one in sickness.

The second version is titled "Verses" and is translated as follows:

Last night your lost memory so came into the heart
As spring comes in the wilderness quietly,
As the zephyr moves slowly in deserts,
As rest comes without cause to a sick man.

(Image of Faiz Ahmed Faiz taken from www.getpakistan.com/home/celebrity/faiz.htm)