This Translation Tuesday, we feature two exquisite poems of love and loss that take the moon as their emotional core. Drawn from the posthumously published collection Aankhein, this tender pair of poems by the Pakistani writer Sara Shagufta (1954–1984) wrestles with the experiences of mortality with an equal penchant for directness and metaphor: “death bore a child / left her in my lap.” Translated from the Urdu by Patricia Hartland, Shagufta’s poems here are suffused with a rollicking rhythm and a profusion of internal rhymes that move the ear as much as the heart. 

moon’s debt

tears carved our eyes into being

in our
          own
tidal tumult

we pulled at the ropes

             our own deathwailing

the earth hears
the stars’ screams loudest
                              not the sky’s

i unbraided death’s hair
                            and was stretched out on a bed of lies

eyes, a game of marbles
                                                        in sleep’s keep

not-morning-not-night
the between-space
withstood its own duality

my moon owes a debt to the sky
[i loaned this
moon from the sky] READ MORE…