Dawn
It was not the beginning
Nor the end
Taking this for that
We stumbled
And lost our way
Less free now
to go to our temples
Doors battered, broken, boarded
We stumbled
And lost our way
Regroup
Retreat
Advance anew
There is a dawn
Not this dawn
Nor that dawn
But a dawn
We’ll know
When the light falls
On all of us
All of us
ALL of us.
____________
subh-e aazaadii. Translations in Baran Farooqi, Khalid Hasan,
Shiv Kumar, Victor Kierman.
by Anjum Altaf
from More Transgressions,
Poems inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
LG Publishers Distributors, Delhi, 2021