How Much We Have Changed In This State Of Denial Poem by Naseer Ahmed Nasir

Envar Fitrat!
Gone is the phosphorus in my bones,
illuminating since ages
And there, preparing news
you aren't aware too,
that instead of scribbling
your hands are just busy
making block prints from the ink,
sprinkling the droplets of blood
and picking up the pieces of flesh
Envar Fitrat! For how long will you keep getting killed,
for how long will you keep committing suicide?
The appetite of a newspaper can never be satiated
it will remain hungry,
even after swallowing all the news in the world

Envar Fitrat!
those were the days
when you were seeking work and I,
holding the bundles of blueprints in my hands
all the day long,
working among the mounds of excavated earth
and on the rooftops of concrete,
used to put on hold
the poetries inundating like a tempest
Then, there weren't any NGOs or Civil Society around,
no Food Streets, no Coffee Shops either
After guzzling down tea on the stalls
we used to get depressed
seeing humans and donkeys
chained together in the labor camps
We used to dream of ending the bonded labor and
bringing revolution to the world with our poems
There are now heavy-duty machinery instead
The reverberations of "Hush Hush"
have been replaced with the "Grrr Grrr" of machines
but, the bonded labor is still there
with new names and new snares

Envar Fitrat!
We were a few
But, we were too good
for all the sights, all the parks
all the cinema houses, all the tea houses
and all the writers put together
The roads of Islamabad
used to welcome us with open arms
The trees and shrubberies at Daman-e-Koh
the floras and paths of Rose-Garden
mini-hills at Shakar-Parian
the evenings of Melody and Aab-Para
all used to befriend us
The restaurants at Super Market
open even during the day time in Ramadan
as if waiting for us to serve
The camps of tourists and hippies
used to attract us and
entice in a strange way
The streams and waterfalls of Saidpur
used to wash away all the filth on us
just to blush afterwards, seeing the glow of our souls
While chit chatting, sitting on the rocks
the wind used to get involved in it too
Even the clouds loved to descend
from the Margallas,
just to listen to our poems
Visiting bookshops
and old bookstalls in Saddar on Sundays,
used to be our greatest extravagance and,
it was hard to pass a single day
without seeing each other
But now, individually we are all alone
and can live for months and years
without seeing each other
Envar Fitrat!
"Once, just once for a day"
get out from the world of newsroom
to see how we have changed in this state of denial

Envar Fitrat!
For how long will you keep standing
"on the banks of ancient waters"?
The world is at war
to get hold of its new reservoirs
New highways are being built
from the lofty icy peaks
to the shores of warm waters
The sea, that always welcomed you so fervently,
that used to be so full of noise of the seagulls
and ballads of the fishermen
has now been converted into a deep seaport
The mermaids and the dhows
do not come there anymore
Laden with coal and urea fertilizers
there dock the merchant vessels now! !

Original poem in Urdu by Naseer Ahmed Nasir
English translation by Kamran Awan