Poetry
دستِ صبا
Not translated into English
Faiz Ahmed Faiz · 1952
Synopsis
The poems the author wrote in prison, in isolation, during the Rawalpindi conspiracy trial, published roughly in the order of their composition: first poems of defiance, then of memory, finally of solitude and despair. Nature glimpsed between the walls, the evening breeze, the night descending its staircase of stars step by step, takes on an acute presence; the love of a woman and that of a country dreamed of before the partition answer each other there, and the book opens with a preface in which the poet calls for struggle as much as for seeing.
Context
Arrested with General Akbar Khan and other communists, accused of having planned to overthrow the government of Liaquat Ali Khan, the author was held incommunicado, in Hyderabad and then in Montgomery, and wrote to his wife Alys letters in which the nature glimpsed from behind the walls occupies a large place. The collection was presented in Lahore, at the Argentina hotel, during the trial, and the detainees in Hyderabad obtained permission to celebrate its publication, according to Ted Genoways. Zindan Nama, drawn from the same years of detention, followed.
Who it is for
In Urdu; several poems exist in English in the translations of Victor Kiernan, and the amorous vocabulary of the ghazal can also be read there in a political key.
Prizes and reception
Ted Genoways reads it as a poetry of witness, speaking for the governed against those who govern them.
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