Nayyara Sings Faiz
Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 8:24 am
Nayyara Noor sings poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
Aaj Bazaar Mein (In the Market today)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcUrDmkyf7Y
Intesaab (Dedication)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYHrXjTBs1w
- with spoken word by Shoaib Hashmi
Yeh Haath Salamat Hai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f7mtoZmrjM
Tum Mere Pas Raho (Stay With Me)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iemTUycRBCU
Translations
Aaj Bazaar Mein (In the Market today)
Walk through the bazaar today with feet in chains
Eyes moist with rage are not enough
Love concealed, is not enough
Walk with hands filled with stars flung out in ecstasy
Walk with ashes on your head and a bloodstained cloak
Walk through the city of lovers, where the road awaits
Walk past the gaping crowds, the ruler and the commoner
Past the slings and arrows of slander
Past the unhappy dawn and the oppressed day
In whom can they confide other than us
I alone know whose heart is clean in the city of lovers
And who is fit to die at the hands of the killer
Bind the heart, prepare yourself, O You with aching hearts
Come, let us walk again towards our end
Intesaab (Dedication)
Dedicated to these times, and the sorrow of these times.
The pain of today, that is set against the plentiful garden of life.
The forest of dead leaves, that is my land.
The collection of pain that is my land.
Dedicated to the gloomy lives of clerks
Moth eaten hearts and words.
Dedicated to the postmen
Dedicated to the coachmen
Dedicated to the railway workers
Dedicated to the innocent beings in the factories.
O Emperor of the World, Master and God’s representative on this Earth,
This is dedicated to the farmer
whose herds were run off by the wicked men
and whose daughter was carried off by the bandits.
One finger of whose handful of land was cut by the bureaucrats
and another finger by the government, in the name of taxation.
Whose pride is destroyed under the feet of the men with power.
Dedicated to the sad mothers
whose children sob at night.
Sleepless, who are not steadied by an embrace.
Don’t share what ails them,
and are not consoled by entreaties or tears.
Dedicated to the beautiful girls,
the beauty of whose eyes
on every balcony, behind every curtain,
blossomed in vain and withered away.
Dedicated to those wives
whose bodies have grown tired of trying to look beautiful on loveless beds
Dedicated to the widows.
Dedicated to the lanes in the slums and colonies
Whose scattered garbage and refuse,
The moon contemplates and sanctifies in the night.
From amongst whose shadows emanates
The henna-ed hair under the veils
The clink of bangles
The scent of loosened tresses.
The stench of impassioned bodies burning in their own sweat.
Dedicated to the students
Those who arrived at the gates of the officials
Petitioning with open arms for pen and paper.
But never came back.
Those innocents who, in their idealism,
took the fire of dedicated learning in their young hearts
and reached instead the shadows of endless night.
Dedicated to those prisoners
in whose hearts the future shone like a pearl
But was burnt in the troubled nights of the prison
and diminished into a tiny flicker.
Dedicated to the heralders of the days to come
Those, who, like the scent of a rose, are
Enraptured by their own message.
Yeh Haath Salamat Hai (While these Hands are healthy/strong/intact)
- translated by Professor Carlo Coppola
While these hands are intact, while heat runs in this blood,
While truth is in the heart, while there is strength in this tongue,
You and I will teach the frenzy of the lyre and flute to those iron collars and ankle chains,
And teach such frenzy that the tumult of Caesar and Xerxes’ drumming is nothing before it;
Our every moment is an age; our every future is today.
This evening and dawn, this sun and moon, the stars and more brilliant stars are ours?
The slate and the pen, this drum and banner, this wealth and glory all are ours.
This song is the last verse of a poem Do Avazen (Two Voices)
http://mulosige.soas.ac.uk/two-voices-faiz-ahmed-faiz/
Tum Mere Pas Raho (Stay With Me)
- translated by Mustansir Dalvi
Stay with me,
my assassin, my beloved, stay with me.
When the night spreads
its unction of musk, its diamond scalpel,
drunk on the blood of the firmament, this inky night,
lamenting, laughing, ululating,
dances its grief away on jangling anklets.
The moment when hearts, like secrets steeped deep within breasts,
like knives secreted deep within sleeves lie in wait
for the right moment. The moment
when wine tinkles into cups like a child's whimper,
when discontent swells and cannot be assuaged,
when nothing seems to work at all,
when that night comes to pass,
when that funereal, hushed, black night comes to pass
stay with me,
my assassin, my beloved, stay with me.