Mahmoud Darwish has passed away

I don't know how many of you have heard of the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. In fact, he was known as the Palestinian national poet and was always one of the people mentioned when it came of the Nobel sweepstakes for some time.

Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 to 9 August 2008) is no more. He passed away after suffering complications in an open heart surgery. You can read the story on the BBC website.

Let me give you one of his quotes:

I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet.

Nazim Hikmet

Nazim Hikmet (1902-June 3, 1963) was one of the most celebrated poets of the twentieth century. He was Turkish and a leftist intellectual. I would like to give you a very interesting quote from Hikmet:

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example-
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.

You could learn more about his works at the Marxists.org archive and the link is here. And my message to all my friends is to 'stop acting and start living'.

Old translation of Gujarati poem

I had published a number of translations of Gujarati poets in Indian Literature, a journal that is published by the Sahitya Akademi [The National Academy of Letters, India] in 1997, in an issue numbered 181.

One such poet is Labhshankar Thakar who is known as a modernist poet in Gujarati. The translation can be seen in the printed copy of the journal but here it has already been reproduced on Muse India, which is an online literary journal, so, I am sure there are no copyright issues. Here is the poem:

Sunlight

In the morning dew sunlight
melts.
Melts, melts a mountain of shadows.
And in tears
the green thorn thistle
drowning floating
floating drowning
colliding whirling comes
near the wild thorn thistle.
On the thorn thistle,
a sandgrouse sits sandgrouse sits sandgrouse sits
its wing trembles trembles trembles.
In the grandfather's eyes, light dims.
In the dim dim dawn dawn
light light
oho I hear again oho I hear from a distance
in the thak .... thak .... thak .... thak .... sounds
I become a flower and blossom
blossom
become a tree and swing
swing
become an ocean and drown
drown
become a mountain and jump
jump
become the sky and shatter
shatter becoming sunlight
becoming sunlight scatter
I touch the deep of the morning's dew-ocean.
My crunched crunched edge goes on melting.
Melts melts a mountain of shadows!

Hope you enjoyed it!