English Poems

[DaZahroJaam.]

I watch you
From the edges of the light
Your voice like the flute
Dancing to your own song.

[khushal]

^^I thought you were going to watch TV

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Richard Cory

By Edwin Arlington Robinson 1869–1935

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

The Grandfather

This angelic woman with Northern eyes,
who lives attentive to the rhythm of her European blood,
is unaware that in the depths of that rhythm
a black man beats the hard heads of deep drums.

Under the severe line of her sharp nose,
her mouth traces a short line in a fine stroke,
and no crow dirties the untrodden snow
of her flesh, that shines tremulous and bare.

Oh, my lady! Look at your mysterious veins;
row in the live waters that flow inside of you,
and see passing by lilies, nelumbiums, lotuses and roses;

and, troubled, you will see next to the fresh bank
the sweet dark shadow of the grandfather who fled,
the one who curled forever your yellow hair.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

A tender homage by Robert Plant to his son Karac who died early at the age of 5

All of My Love

Should I fall out of love, my fire in the light?
To chase a feather in the wind
Within the glow that weaves a cloak of delight
There moves a thread that has no end.

For many hours and days that pass over soon
the tides have caused your flame to dim
At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom
Is this to end or just begin?

The cup is raised, the toast is made yet again
One voice is clear above the din
Proud Arianne one word, my will to sustain
For me, the cloth once more to spin

Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time
his is the force that lies within
Ours is the fire, all the warmth we can find
He is a feather in the wind

Oh, all of my love
Yes, all of my love to you child!

[DaZahroJaam.]

By an Evolutionist

The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,
And the man said, ‘Am I your debtor?’
And the Lord–‘Not yet; but make it as clean as you can,
And then I will let you a better.’


I.
If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable,
Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines,
I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable,
Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines?


II.
What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack?
Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar!


OLD AGE

Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was linkt with thee eighty years back.
Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on a star.


I.

If my body come from brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than their own,
I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute..
No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne,
Hold the sceptre, Human Soul, and rule thy province of the brute.


II.

I have climb’d to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past.
Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire,
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last,
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is higher.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Haiku by Ben Hanscom

Your hair is winter fire
January embers
My heart burns there, too

[DaZahroJaam.]

Remember him, whom Passion's power
Severely---deeply---vainly proved:
Remember thou that dangerous hour,
When neither fell, though both were loved.

That yielding breast, that melting eye,
Too much invited to be blessed:
That gentle prayer, that pleading sigh,
The wilder wish reproved, repressed.

Oh! let me feel that all I lost
But saved thee all that Conscience fears;
And blush for every pang it cost
To spare the vain remorse of years.

Yet think of this when many a tongue,
Whose busy accents whisper blame,
Would do the heart that loved thee wrong,
And brand a nearly blighted name.

Think that, whate'er to others, thou
Hast seen each selfish thought subdued:
I bless thy purer soul even now,
Even now, in midnight solitude.

Oh, God! that we had met in time,
Our hearts as fond, thy hand more free;
When thou hadst loved without a crime,
And I been less unworthy thee.

Far may thy days, as heretofore,
From this our gaudy world be past!
And that too bitter moment o'er,
Oh! may such trial be thy last.

This heart, alas! perverted long,
Itself destroyed might there destroy;
To meet thee in the glittering throng,
Would wake Presumption's hope of joy.

Then to the things whose bliss or woe,
Like mine, is wild and worthless all,
That world resign---such scenes forego,
Where those who feel must surely fall.

Thy youth, thy charms, thy tenderness---
Thy soul from long seclusion pure;
From what even here hath passed, may guess
What there thy bosom must endure.

Oh, pardon that imploring tear,
Since not by Virtue shed in vain,
My frenzy drew from eyes so dear;
For me they shall not weep again.

Though long and mournful must it be,
The thought that we no more may meet;
Yet I deserve the stern decree,
And almost deem the sentence sweet.

Still---had I loved thee less---my heart
Had then less sacrificed to thine;
It felt not half so much to part
As if its guilt had made thee mine.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Al-Agailla

My only illness is being at al Agailla camp, the imprisonment of my tribe and the long way from home…

My only illness is the loss of my beloved, good-looking strong people on top of camels and best-looking horses…

My only illness is having to lose my dignity at my advanced age and the loss of our finest people, the ones we cannot do without…

My only illness is the torturing of our young women, with their bodies exposed…

My only illness is the loss of sweet and good people and having to be ruled by grotesque people whose straight faces show nothing but misery…

My only illness is the broken hearts, the falling tears and all the herds with no protector of care-taker.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

[DaZahroJaam.]

I have ransacked the encyclopedias
And slid my fingers among topics and titles
Looking for you.
And the answer comes slow.
There seems to be no answer.
I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the why of it.
Or-the iceman with his iron tongs gripping a clear cube in summer sunlight-maybe he will know.

[DaZahroJaam.]

The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas, we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of the spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory..

[DaZahroJaam.]

The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil..

[marwat]

is there any better poem other than my signature? i challenge all of you show me better one

[marwat]

A defeated soldier

Like the Soldier…
With Flag in Hand,
I advanced forth, seeking victory over your heart….
The first strike was yours…
I was frozen….
With one quick sweet glance,
Those beautiful eyes,
Taking my heart prisons…
Instead of my planned occupation,
I surrendered…
My dreams & feelings,
One by one,
They fell like,
A Defeated Soldier….

translated from a pashto poem and once appeared in time magazine decades ago. anyone guess who's the poet?

edit: seems like every one is clueless !! ok it's the poem of Ghani lewanay