Poetry in Motion, Day 25 (Faiz Ahmed Faiz)

Pictured above are my poster and then an image from the Poetry Society of America site that hosted this and several other postcards, available for viewing. Click here to see and send a postcard!

This poster almost got signed, at a New School poetry event in November 2001, by the translator Agha Shahid Ali. However, Mr. Ali cancelled his appearance and understandably so, considering he succumbed to brain cancer before the end of the year. I have a very nice item signed by Ali, but that's for another post, another day. Meanwhile, enjoy the poem:

Let Me Think

You ask me about that country
whose details now escape me,
I don't remember its geography,
nothing of its history.
And should I visit it in memory,
It would be as I would a past lover,
After years, for a night,
no longer restless with passion, with no fear of regret.
I have reached that age
when one visits the heart merely as a courtesy...

 -- Faiz Ahmed Faiz
 (Translated from the Urdu by Agha Shahid

Previous BillyBlog Poetry in Motion posts:

from "My Grandmother's New York Apartment" by Elizabeth Alexander (Day 1)
from "A Bouquet" by Bei Dao (Day 2)
"Separation" by W.S. Merwin (Day 3)
"The Groundfall Pear" by Jane Hirshfield (Day 4)
"For Friendship" by Robert Creeley (Day 5)
from "Crazy Horse Speaks" by Sherman Alexie (Day 6)
"Hunger" by Billy Collins (Day 7)
from "Little Man Around the House" by Yusef Komunyakaa (Day 8)
"The Loon on Oak-Head Pond" by Mary Oliver (Day 9)
from "I Am Vertical" by Sylvia Plath (Day 10 - part 1)
"Two Haiku" by Kobayashi Issa (Robert Hass, trans.) (Day 10 - part 2)
"you say 'i will come' " by Lady Otomo No Sakanoe (Kenneth Rexroth, trans.) (Day 11)
"You Called Me Corazón" by Sandra Cisneros (Day 12)
"Too Much Heat, Too Much Work" by Tu Fu (Carolyn Kizer, trans.) (Day 13)
"Sew" by Donald Hall (Day 14)
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (Day 15)
"Luck" by Langston Hughes (Day 16)
"0˚" by Elizabeth Spires (Day 17 - part 1)
"I Finally Managed to Speak with Her" by Hal Sirowitz (Day 17 - part 2)
"Window" by Carl Sandburg (Day 18)
" 'Hope' is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson (Day 19)
from "Watch Repair" by Charles Simic (Day 20)
"Thank You, My Dear" by Sappho (Mary Barnard, trans.) (Day 21)
"A Piece of the Storm" and "Keeping Things Whole"  by Mark Strand (Day 22)
"Lullaby for a Daughter" by Mary Jo Salter (Day 23)
"I Ask My Mother to Sing" by Li-Young Lee (Day 24)