I've been thinking a lot about the displaced people of Libya in the last few days, pouring over the border into Tunisia, already fraught with its own problems. I've listened to RTE radio programmes where Irish parents complain bitterly that their well-educated children must now emigrate to find work. Not a great situation either, but comparatively better.
I think this poem says a lot about displacement, exile and being adrift. Very common states in the world today.
On a personal level, about fragmentation, perhaps?
Can Someone Bring Me My Entire Being?
Can someone bring me my entire being?
My arms, my eyes, my face?
I am a river flowing into the wrong sea
If only someone could restore me to the desert
Life goes on but I want no more from it
Than my childhood, my firefly, my doll
My vision does not admit this new season
Take me back to my old dream
Of finding one face among the many in my city
Whose eyes can read deep into me
My life has been a boat in a whirlpool for so long
O god, please let it sink or drift back to the desert
My arms, my eyes, my face?
I am a river flowing into the wrong sea
If only someone could restore me to the desert
Life goes on but I want no more from it
Than my childhood, my firefly, my doll
My vision does not admit this new season
Take me back to my old dream
Of finding one face among the many in my city
Whose eyes can read deep into me
My life has been a boat in a whirlpool for so long
O god, please let it sink or drift back to the desert
About the author:
Noshi Gillani
Noshi Gillani was born in Pakistan in 1964. Her fifth collection of poems: Ay Meeray Shureek-E-Risal-E-Jaan, Hum Tera Intezaar Kurtay Rahey (O My Beloved, I Kept Waiting for You) was published in Pakistan in 2008.
The candour and frankness of her highly-charged poems is unusual for a woman writing in Urdu and she has gained a committed international audience, performing regularly at large poetry gatherings in Pakistan, Australia, Canada and the US. Unknown outside the Pakistani community, the translations here mark her introduction to an English-speaking audience.
