Wasif Bakhtari
Written by Latif Nazemi
Translated by Sharif Fayez
Wasif Bakhtari is considered as a foremost Afghan poet and literary scholar in contemporary Farsi/Dari literature in Afghanistan. He is widely known in Afghanistan and among the Afghan Diaspora literati abroad for his sophisticated modern poetry and scholarly works on Farsi/Dari literature. As a leading modern poet, Bakhtari has had enormous influence on hundreds of young Afghan poets and writers in Afghanistan and abroad. He is revered by many of his fellow poets and writers as one of the founders of modern Afghan poetry.
Wasif Bakhtari was born in 1943 in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital city of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan, where he completed his primary and secondary education. In 1967, he received his bachelor degree in Farsi/Dari literature from Kabul University. In 1976, he received his master degree in education from Teachers College Columbia University in New York.
For about 15 years, he wrote and edited school textbooks for the Afghan Ministry of Education in Kabul. In the 1980s, he was the editor of a popular magazine called Zhawandoon (Life) and the newsletter of the Society of Afghan Writers. After the Communist Coup, he was imprisoned for two years on charges of his dissident political views. Following the Soviet pullout, the invasion of Kabul by the Taliban militants forced him to escape to Peshawar and later to immigrate to California, where he is living now with his wife and children in Los Angeles.
He was one of the leading Afghan poets who wrote Nima-style and modern poetry.
Bakhtari was influenced by a number of important Iranian poets, particularly Nima Yoshij, Mehdi Ikhwan Thaleth, Farukh Farukhzad, Nadir Nadirpur, and Ahmad Shamlu. Later, he developed his own distinct poetic style and language. He also acquired a good knowledge of world literature in English translation while studying at Columbia University and later translated into Farsi a number of poems from world literature in English.
For a deeper understanding of the poet and his works, I like to continue this introduction with a summary of an article on Bakhtari by Latif Nazemi, an equally eminent modern poet and critic in Farsi/Dari literature. In his recent article “In the Pineland of Wasif Bakhtari’s Verse and Intellect,” Nazemi says:
“Wasif has tested his talent in many poetic forms and proven his skill and success in all of them. He is a poet with an intellectual and social inclination, often blending his words with new images in an attempt to explore the use of literature in social life. In many of his works, his art appears as part of social reality, to which he has devoted much of his literary life. The social subjects of his poetry can be classified into the followings:
-
Idealism
-
Freedom
-
Hopelessness, loneliness and estrangement
-
Longing for the past
-
Protest and anger
In the later part of the 1960s after graduating from Kabul University and later in the 1970s, the poet witnessed a period of intense political changes and crises in his country, which led to the drafting of a new constitution and press law and thus paving the way for a new society. At that time, about 30 new independent newspapers, often with ideological and utopian trends, were published. Street demonstrations and strikes, with the closure of Kabul University, were staged in the same years. Furthermore, leftist, conservative, and centrist political parties became engaged in riotous and sometimes violent political activities. Obviously the literature of the time could not remain unaffected by the political atmosphere of the time.
In 1969, two of his revolutionary poems “Song of the Village” and “Epic of the
Flame” were published in Shula-e-Jawid newsletter (the mouthpiece of the
pro-Maoist Shula-e-Jawid party) at a time when political turmoil was escalating
in the country. Wasif’s voice in the two pieces resembles that of Lahoti (an
Iranian leftist poet) when inviting his country’s masses to rise, break the
shackles of oppression and slavery, and raise the flag of liberation. In those
days, “the Epic of the Flame” passed from hand to hand, with his party and
ideological comrades fervently declaiming them in their street demonstrations.
However, Wasif has not included those poems in any of the seven collections he
has published up to now.
In 1962-1972, ideological and political literature became popular in Afghanistan, but in his poetry the manifestations of this feverish time are rarely reflected. Only in the first three collections of his poetry, some footprints of the events and his ideological, political and philosophical thoughts are visible. This was a time when he was a poet of utopian visions, with the hope that someday the masses would be in power and justice prevail. In his “Passage from Purgatory” he says:
May absurdity, bestiality, and hostility end!
What is evident, what is hidden, belongs to the masses
The earth belongs to the masses, time belongs to the masses.
Happy the time when the masses will rule over these lands,
Over these times with justice
(This Broken Mirror of History, p. 12)
In another poem, he claims that the desert is not a wasteland, the desert guardian is not silent, and deliverance comes from the sword:
Oh children of the street!
On this desert the desert traveler
Still plants voices
With the throat of all phoenixes
The desert traveler
Has still an orchard of red apples
In his sleeve
(An Introduction at the End, p. 50)
His poetry in those years of political crises, occupation and conflicts assumes a social dimension. In his youth, he was obsessed with a utopia he never attained, but he has not given up his hope. Even in 1964 when he was hopeless and dejected, he wrote “The Glad Tidings,” in which he awaits the sound of a trumpet to herald the coming of a hero from the east. He is a poet in search of a hero and sees his imaginary hero riding a galloping steed:
A trumpet from a city in the east is coming
Heralding the coming
Of the army lord of the lands of ambergris and light
May this be a good omen!
For the eyes to see the birth of anemones coming
The kingly Siyawash from a far city of fire is coming.
(And the Sun Doesn’t Die, p. 570)
The 1970s was a decade of despair and philosophical pessimism, with a nostalgic longing for the remote past. He sees that his fellow poets, like the citizens of the ancient Babylon, don’t understand their words. The symbolic poem “Eagle from Heights…,” which he composed in 1973, is a sharp sarcasm against the intellectuals of the time, who have turned their backs against the sun, while facing the night. However, he still calls on those who still speak the same language to become a gushing river.
In the poem “On the Bed of Silence,” Bakhtari longs for the return of the mythical Ferhad to strike his axe on the head of the evil Parwiz. In “Passage from Purgatory” he looks for Buddha, Mazdak, Zoroaster, and other mythical heroes.
Where are Buddha, Mazdak, and Zoroaster?
Where is Sam to smash heads of the demons?
Where is that ancient wise man, the old Jamaseb?
to close the book of the Devil?
(This Broken Mirror of History, p. 11)
In general, his seven collections of poems present two types of world views. The first one is reflected in his ideological and political poetry from 1967 to 1977. His second one, which reflects his deeper wisdom of life, with a strong sense of protest against injustice, is reflected in his 1973-1983’s poems. During the second period, his outlook, while avoiding an ideological and one-dimensional view, manifests an intellectual and humanistic attitude, with a strong sense of protest. If his perspectives are not alike in all of the collections, it is because innumerable incidents have taken place in his country and the poet turns the pages of his time with a realistic view.
Although he is no longer an ideological poet, his voice of protest and anger has not subsided against injustice, war, and occupation during the last quarter of the 20th century. Every time he sees oppression, he starts an incantation of curses:
Oh all leaves of the world over
more than your numbers
I have pebbles in my cursing fling.
I have passed by burned lilacs
and by the most empty windows
and have heard whispers of prisoners
from the depth of their throats
(Until the Pentagonal City of Freedom, p. 1)
Unfortunately, except for the first three collections of poems published in Kabul, the composition dates of his poems in the other four collections are missing; therefore the reader cannot understand easily the evolutionary course of the poet’s thoughts in his works. In the conclusion of the fifth collection of his poems, Wasif writes: “I removed all the dates from the ends of the poems except in a few cases, which will become obvious. Due to his concern over censorship and surveillance, he changed the dates of some of his poems, which has confused some of his readers and critics who want to understand his thought process in the course of time. It is evident that most of his poems, in which the foot-prints of the country’s historical events and phenomena could be discerned, were composed during the last quarter of the 20th century.
Bakhtari turns a historical event into an artistic one to make us ponder and speculate. If in his earlier works he identifies art with life; in his later works he recognizes art as a mirror of life and never attempts to separate his art from history , and he doesn’t slip from realism to formalism even though he places a special importance on form and language. Nevertheless, he cannot be a formalistic poet by any means.
Wasif’s poetry written in those painful years of exile in Islamabad and Peshawar is an elegy about the death of freedom and the torching of his land. Here I prefer to quote the poem “You Who Say How It Happened” to demonstrate that Bakhtari has captured in verse the calendar of more than twenty-years of his country. The words “snow, fireplace, fire-wood, and burner” in this poem are symbols standing for two occupations, two invasions, and two surprise attacks:
For you, who ask how it happened
For you who ask
how it happened
I have a short answer:
That winter, I remember well,
caravans came from faraway cities.
…
Dwellers of this city had their blood
frozen by the winter’s cold and snow
However, those merchants who owned
the merchandise on mules and camels,
opened ice-selling booths
in all of the city’s streets
Leaders of the caravans called in deep voices:
Oh people!
never underestimate our heroism
…
…
Half of the city’s dwellers died
the other half
wished death as a permanent peace
in spite of this, leaders of the caravans called in deep voices:
Oh people!
We have brought you fresh, fresh snow
to release you from the pain of this cold
Later the caravans went back to their city and land
The following year in the summer
when it was too hot even for the fish to survive in water
other caravans came
Leaders of these caravans also cried in every city street:
Oh people!
We have brought you fire wood, fireplace and fire burner
and hot water from the history’s bath
to release you from the pain of this heat
And remember,
never underestimate our bravery!
…
Such was the event
and it was bloody
(The Grief of the Lost Isfandiyar, pp. 6-8)
In “The Wasteland,” T. S. Eliot has a poem, in which he calls April the cruelest month:
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Memory and desire, stirring
Wasif also has two poems about the month of April: “From the Purgatory of Calendar” and “The City of Calendar,” in both of which April is called an ominous month. The poems “Introduction to the Book of Brutality” and “The Red Volcano” are devoted to this subject. Only his compatriots know why this month is so ominous and cruel. At the end of this month – April 27 and April 28 – the stories of blood and attack begin.
When April comes
every drop of blood running in the vessels of flowers
becomes a river of delirium and pain
as if this month
until the last page of history
will be an
introduction to the book of brutality
of the volcano of the purgatory …
and an umbrella of the throne of the ignoble
(Up to the Pentagonal City of Freedom, p. 35)
Eliot attacks April in a sentimental way; Wasif attacks it from a historical perspective. For Wasif, another month is more ominous than April and that is the month of September, when the locusts (Taliban) of the south attacked the lands of his fellow countrymen; therefore the poet must have a bitter memory of this month in his heart:
For a long time I have thought that
We…
Have been the exiles of April
And this ominous and hellish month
Is the most disgraceful street
In the city calendar
But I didn’t know at that time
That there should be bitter anger
In our hearts from “September”
(The Grief of Isfandiyar, pp. 9-10)
With this summary of Nazemi’s critique, I would like to mention that my translation of Bakhtari’s poetry is only a start, with obvious shortcomings. His poetry, loaded with symbolism, myth, and historical allusions, poses many problems for a translator. His profound knowledge of classical Farsi/Dari literature, history and mythology, with his own sophisticated literary style and outlook, makes it very difficult to fully understand the deeper layers of his poetry, particularly in translation. In this small collection, I have selected the ones that pose fewer problems for translation.
The first poem “Eagle from Heights” is selected from a collection of poems titled The Closed Gates of Calendar. Bakhtari wrote this poem in 1973 before the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when he was still an idealistic poet. His image of Kabul as an ancient Babylon, whose leaders caused its destruction because of their arrogance and lack of understanding, is a very powerful image symbolizing the plight of this city during the last three decades of war.
Eagle from Heights…
Ancient myths have it that
when Babylon, that splendid city,
that old poplar of the field of history conquered other lands
its leaders insolently indulged in arrogance
to an extent that they saw themselves as deities
And its citizens’ pride outdid that of the leaders
And these incited the wrath of God
who punished them in such an odd way
that they could not comprehend their own talks
If one uttered some greeting song
to another it would be a cursing call.
Thus an ominous cloud hung over Babylon
with its citizens’ tongues darting out as those of snakes
their souls inflated with intense malice,
and foreheads furrowed from extreme grimace
And with the sound of fury ringing all around,
words of kindness were no longer said.
Except the futile cursing weed,
nothing was shooting forth in the gardens of their hearts.
They spoke of war and slashing:
every word they said was a poisoned spike
Oh warriors, like ivies twisting on branches of hatred,
have you not turned this city into a Babylon of the bewildered
whose hatred and vengeance have borne these bitter fruits
in this garden of raw dreams?
You are fighting as if not understanding your words
How ignorantly we have become a discordant band!
our spirits, like mirrors stained with poison of pain;
our words, like grass shriveled from autumn frost;
our hearts, like cradles vacant of children of hope;
Like witches, carrying their spells,
before the night,
we have turned against the sun.
If they have cast fire in our pine-land,
if scorching winds rise to respond to the cry of the grass,
consider this not as a wasteland,
this land of perpetual bubbling springs.
The stain on the mirrors will not last forever.
If nothing other than the cursing weed grows
in the garden of hearts,
consider it not as harmful to growth.
For every ending is a beginning and
the path leads to the boundless
Never mind if the traveler does not look for another path
other than the old trodden and tiring one.
Why should we be like a stained mirror?
We should be flowing like a river.
We should be solidly standing like a mountain,
Weakness comes from a tree standing alone.
Creative pride comes from trees standing together.
The eagle from heights is screaming:
though the horizons have no ending in sight.
I must fly from the city’s dark ramparts
Lest the Devil of the nights of heavy steps
raise its flag on the last stronghold;
Lest this bird of fire-wing and golden gait --
called moments of life --
fly away from our fleeting life’s trembling twig;
Lest they leave us like a dried flower
inside the pages of the history book
Lest the history’s ashes fall from the crest of fire
burning from our souls’ pure fire-wood.
For if this burning fire went off
there would not be a word of hope for Arash the Archer.
If the peace light breaks this night into a new dawn
then let me set a red stone from my own blood --
the dew on the flower leaf of life --
into the history’s ring.
In the Shadow of Horizontal Seasons
A tree must have an upright figure
so must a forest and walls
Oh horizontal trees!
Oh horizontal forests!
Oh horizontal walls!
with horizontal assumptions
with horizontal voices and
even horizontal screams!
Oh horizontal generations!
Resting for so many years
in the shadows of horizontal seasons
Should one count you
as martyrs of the red progeny?
Or from the rootless generation
who has undermined its roots
with its fingers and teeth?
Have you not heard this from your heroes
when calling on you to drive out
invading elephants from the land?
A bird is fond of its nest
Men of elephant power needed to frighten invading elephants
And watch guards
must watch from watch towers
for every thorn-bud shooting from earth
as a potential enemy in the field
as astronomers scan the sky for sinister stars
Alas, if tomorrow’s trees are also horizontal
Alas, if tomorrow’s forests are also horizontal
Alas, if tomorrow’s walls are also horizontal
Where would birds build their nests?
Then there would not be anyone to prevent a flood
And how can one target the hearts of human beasts?
Oh horizontal trees!
Oh horizontal walls!
Oh horizontal forests!
Oh horizontal generations!
Resting so long in the shadows of horizontal seasons
in the drift of rabid moments
Must you pay these tributes forever?
Frames and Pictures
Frames on walls
Isolated from days and nights
Silently complaining
At the curves of their corners
About being tired of holding
These vile and shameful figures
…And I Cried
The night was passing through an ambush land
On a terrace edge, a small lantern was burning
And in the blow of the wind’s lashing syllables
a woman was tearfully talking about a bird
that never returned from a jungle of storms
The bird that from high over the night’s essence
heard the sound of the tragedy of the yellowing grass
and passed it on to the river, mountain, forest, and desert
The bird that from high over the night’s essence
riding the rain’s steed and the night’s horse,
was heading to guard the new sprouts’ sleep.
The bird that from high, high over the night’s essence
screamed across the sky:
Oh larks,
Guardians of sleep!
Pull your wet wings from the wandering winds
and come down from your bloody nests
Let’s pour the event’s poison into the night’s throat
like raindrops dripping on the night’s face
Let’s pour it from the red anemones’ rooftop
into the night’s street
Let’s pour the night’s honor
on the twilight’s threshold
The bird that from high over the night’s essence
mourned over every storm-blasted branch
swooped down, curled up, and cried:
Where is that forest’s breath whose voice is green!
The night was passing through an ambush land
On a terrace edge, a small lantern was burning
And in the blow of the wind’s lashing syllables
a woman was tearfully talking about a bird
that never returned from a jungle of storms
. . . And I had cried
(December 30, 1979)
Beware, Oh Beware!
My mother’s tongue was a night-letter dropped in exile alleys
which I read it everyday,
hiding it from father’s watching eyes
And sometimes, urged by Father,
I rode Rustem’s horse
on the green plain of my childhood
from Sharsanzal Zar to old Afrasiyab’s castle
Afrasiyab from his high terrace
threw before me crystal coins of smiles
instead of his poisoned arrows
And I stayed there
thinking that perhaps he was afraid of me
At midnights, however, Mother in her enigmatic words whispered to me:
Oh child, so lost in the swirling dust of the tribes’ caravans,
has it ever occurred to you that that desert-born, desert-wandering chief
has vowed to discern his tribe’s blood-mix
in every vein of the young and old of this great world
as wine drinkers taste wines from outside their bottles?
With a laughter grown on the black text of his malice,
which he has against your forefathers of yesterday and yore,
he is beckoning you toward his castle
considering you one of his and
of his own
I have a silken tongue
However this gossamer has a drop of steel blood
in its every thread
Don’t ever come to fight with me!
Sermon
Oh people, do you know anything?
I am telling you the truth, no more, no less
of what I am, what I saw
Oh people, I wish I were drunk tonight
unaware of what it was and what it is
Oh people
to liquor sellers of this city –
the city that was mine, but not anymore—
I was always knee deep in debt for my drinking frenzy
Now, however,
the clerical police are blood-thirsty and
I have no choice but head toward the green but cold opium streets
Oh, people,
we have been driven out of the history’s threshold
although the false minstrel of our songs keeps telling:
We have been
the moon of Nakhshab, the moon of history, etc.
But have we ever held in our hand the history’s pulse?
Oh people, shame on us!
if once again we sit idle, not rising in defiance
another Holakoo will come from a foreign land
to retaliate against the Abasites for the murder of Abu Muslim
Oh! People, I am telling the truth though half-drunk
There is no other way.
Either we should continue sitting parched
on edges of crystal and pure ponds
as we are while the enemy is ruling us
Or we should thrust our swords
deep in the enemy’s heart
Oh people, I am telling the truth
of what I know
of what we see
No more, no less.
The Nest Remained Empty…
At that time
At that ominous time in favor of the enemy
we were two, two bleeding wings
We were two when crossing the barbed wires of that border
I don’t know with what wings
we traveled that eventful and unwanted trail
Our nest remained empty of joy and warmth forever
I don’t know which one we deserve –
Admiration or imprecation!
However suddenly one of us, one of the two bleeding wings
flew to the faraway borders,
not to return anymore
without a prayer
Oh migrating birds across the horizon,
I don’t know if you have ever seen
a mark, a name inscription on a pigeon’s grave!
Oh God, I wish a kind wind would carry
a handful of thorn and straw
from their nests
to graves of pigeons in love
And inscribe on the black epitaph of the earth
their names and those of their kin
in a writing that only the migrating birds could read
so that in the limbo of their exile
their spirits might rest from the smell of their nests
Travelogue
Oh all leaves of the world’s trees
more than your numbers
I have stones in my cursing fling
I have passed by burned Judas-trees
and the most empty windows
and have heard whispers of prisoners of sounds
in the tunnels of their vocal cords
I have seen
on the other side of false smiles,
paper flowers of assurance,
glasses filled with the poison of doubt
I have seen
that the poetry’s intellectual lantern
has become a way of finding a crumb of bread
that poetesses hang themselves
with the rotting rope of the songs of the desert’s ancient priests
That stars borrow masks from one another
That the earth is raining stars
That in the crowd of words
the lash has a tall figure
That color children are being born
so that their bones may become tools
for beautifying the most disfigured faces
That palm groves have become accustomed to the ax
That forests dream of ashes
That the crystal bowl of the tribe’s pride
in the bitter pain of migration
breaks at the surrender’s threshold
That artificial suns kneel before the night,
before the sunset
That on the silk’ ID it is written:
a girl slave from the race of rags
Oh all leaves of the world’s trees
more than your numbers
I have stones in my cursing fling
…And the Sun Doesn’t Die
The shadow asked the wind:
What happened to that city
that vibrant city of rising glory,
once a vigorous fighting fist and
with its streets like arteries of a living body
that now it has fallen to pieces
with its streets like the severed veins of a wounded soldier?
What happened to those stone-breaking iron-hearts
now standing behind the window of time
like statues, paintings and dolls?
As though the warriors have all become fossilized,
And the faces, all like thick mirrors of disfiguration
And the feet, all like the pulse of the centuries’ dead
And the hands, like rusted swords
And the names -- all slave, slave-born, and servant
And the eyes, all like stained glasses
And their anger, sterile
And their sleep, heavy
False dawns prevailing over eyes
Look, how the desert hungry are infatuated with the bread picture
The unfortunate clowns are riding the stead of shame
The prostitute is embracing her desire
No wind rose from the east
No cloud mourned the sun
For so many crows of deceit
nested in the jungle of truths
Don’t be in the fever of your turbid dreams
On the supposition tower, the drowsy guard
has closed the door before the morning messenger
And the most mournful bird
the only lover of the jungle
builds its nest on the scaffold
And the shadow, the wandering woeful shadow,
heard from the wind the answer to its cry:
Until when crying for the plain of red flowers of innocence and
for the green sleep of plants?
Visit the century’s garden
where the pine blue sunshade and
the blue bezel of the leaf
invite you to the green jungle of hope
if your star became a flashing meteorite
another star would become the sun
And the sun doesn’t die
Go and ask from the birds of dark woods
from the bleeding messengers of storms
from the nest-bearers of the deserts of pride
if they know the path to the green forest of hope
Go and ask if there is another path?
Go and ask if there is a traveler on the path?
And the shadow told its companion, yes there is.
As Far As the Five-Sided Freedom City
On which stone of this desert shall I engrave your name?
There will not be any caravan of these tough travelers
to cross this desert anymore
Oh magnificent lady of Baghdad,
oh lady of sublime beliefs!
Oh Shahrazad of legends,
oh quintessence of patience!
For more than one thousand and one nights
I have invoked your name on this plain
On a fleeting ascension
I put your name on the storm’s stair
But would the wind that you desire open its wings
to waft the fragrance of your name
as far as the end of this desert
as far as the five-sided freedom city?
Alas, guardians of the disaster
are hiding all over this fearful desert,
even the storm’s feet are manacled
within this fortress of bronze-built walls
I see your name among the sparrows
of perching words
on the conquest’s branch of the night-bound city
How suddenly it fell down!
Which hand, with what rock of spiteful word,
brought it down to bleed in the dust?
In the villages of silent fires
the poems’ pigeons of thousands of unknown poets
flew in pursuit of picking the seed of your name
to spread it on the land
in order to create everlasting green fields
Unfortunately they always returned
hopeless and empty-handed and
thus have chosen to nest
in the memory’s saffron-colored groves
For long no drop of happiness has trickled down
even into the throats of the poems’ pigeons
of thousands of unknown poets
And now the disheveled drummer of the storm
is boisterously celebrating your absence
by beating on the drum of rocks
Oh magnificent lady of Baghdad,
lady of sublime beliefs!
Would you not rise again with another name?
Look, how these rotten fruits of the grove of guillotines
like those bloody one thousand and one nights
have congregated
at the crowded crossroads of the five-sided city!
Oh fiery pink spirit
Rise again in the corral word of retribution!
