Hassan the potter - by N.M rashid

Jahanzad, down in the street before your door
Here I am, burnt-out Hasan the Potter
This morning in the bazaar when I saw you
At old Yusuf the perfumer’s shop
In your glance was that brilliance
I’ve longed for, wandering nine years in madness
During that time
I never looked back
At my ailing pots -
Pots formed by my deft hands,
Lifeless creatures of clay, color, oilglaze
They whispered:
“Where is Hasan the Potter now?
He left us, his own creations
He created us, then turned away like the gods!”

Jahanzad, nine years passed for me
As time would pass in a buried city;
Clay in the clay-vats
With its fragrance that used to ravish me
Lay stone-hard
Flagon and flask, jug and cup, candlestick, vase
Props of my trivial life, of my art
Lay broken
I myself, Hasan the Potter, mud-mired, dusty-haired, naked
Besied my wheel, hair disheveled, head on knees
Like some grieving demigod, from fantasized
Clay-and-nothing I molded pliant pots out of dreams.

Jahanzad, nine years ago
You were a child, but you knew
That I, Hasan the Potter
Had seen in your talisman eyes, your sky-warming eyes
Brilliance
Which made my body and soul an open road
For cloud and moon

Janhanzad, the dream-colored Baghdad night
That bank of River Tigris
That boat, the boatman’s closed eyes
For a worn-out, grief-burdened potter
One night was the charged amber
His static being clings to, even now.
His soul, his shape
But that night’s flavor was a river-wave in which
Hasan the Potter sank and has not come up.

Jahanzad, in those days, day after day
That ill-starred woman came
When she saw me by the wheel, mud-mired, head on knees
She shook me by the shoulders -
(that wheel which had been, year after year, my life sole prop!)
she shook me by the shoulders:
“Hasan, look at your desolate house
how will the children’s hollow stomachs be filled?
Love-struck Hasan
Love is a rich man’s game
Hasan, look around at your house!”

In my ears this mournful voice was like
A call to a drowning man in whirlpool.
Those heaps of tears were flower-beds, no doubt
But I, Hasan the Potter, lived among ruins
In a fantasy-city where not
A voice, a movement
A flying bird’s shadow
Not a trace of my life existed.

Jahanzad, here now in you street
Her in the cold-colored darkness of night
I stand before your door
Head and hair disordered
From the window those spell-drowned talisman eyes
Flance at me once again
Time, Jahanzad, it the wheel on which like flagon and flask, cup,
candlestick, vase
Humans are made and unmade
I am a human but
Those nine years that passed in the mold of grief!
Hasan the Potter is now a dust-mound without
Even a hint of moisture.

Jahanzad, this morning in the bazaar
At Yusuf the Perfumer’s shop, your eyes
Spoke once again
Their brilliant mischief
Calls forth again in the dust-mound a quiver of wetness
Perhaps to turn the dust to clay
Who knows the scope of longing, Jahanzad, but
If you want, I go back to being
That potter whose pots
Were the pride of every house and street, city and town
Whose pots shone in the homes of rich and poor
Who knows the scope of longing, Jahanzad, but
If you want, I will go back to my forsaken pots
To the dried-out vats of clay-and-nothing
To the props of my life, my art
So from this clay-and-nothing, color and oil glaze, I
Can again strike sparks
That light up the ruins of hearts.

[A Translation from Urdu language]