Salvation

At times
From my porch
I used to see
The beautiful full-grown rose,
I used to watch
The shadows
Softening the summer's heat,
I used to stare at the Buddha
Sculpted in wood
Sitting on my shelf.
And I thought
How All my years I have
Hated war
And yearned for peace.
When my little girl
Sits in a comer,
And with great care
Dresses her dolls,
And seeing the toy-bear dance
Bursts into peals of laughter,
Drives the dinky little cars,
The puffing locomotive
Allover the room,
I am persuaded that
I am against war
 And have always been
For peace.
At the end of the long day
After her endless chores
The lady of the house
Lies down beside me
Overcome by fatigue,
Her very presence revives
Without exchange of any words
A shared past of ineffable charm.
And I am one again convinced
That I am against war
And have prized peace
All my life.

War I have abhorred
All my life,
The rattle of the sword
Has never sent
Blood coursing
Madly through my veins.
My father was a skilled hunter 
And yet I have never shot
A single bird
With an eager gun.
No, not on the river banks
Not on the lake
Teeming with wild ducks.
From the prow of a boat
Or, standing neck-deep
In the ice-cold water,
Truly speaking
I've never handled
A live cartridge.
I am not a Gandhiite
But have always
Dreaded violence.
Whenever war breaks out
I am plunged into despair.
All my life
I have detested war-
For, as they say,
Famine and pestilence,
Like the mythical horseman 
Follow in the wake of war.
The young, the old,
The hapless women
Tumble down the precipice 
Into the canyon of death.
The tree of eternal values
Is uprooted- by its ancient roots. 
Doom blows its ram's horn 
Throughout the blighted land: 
How I have hated war
All my life!

Yet in this stricken city
Under alien occupation
Ask any old man
Who has lost his son,
Ask any young maiden
Raped by the soldiery,
Ask the newly-widowed
Worn out by her endless tears,
Ask the poet
Struck dumb
By unbearable agony,
Ask him,
Who, beholding
The heap of Bengalee dead,
Mutters to himself constantly
Now bursting into demented laughter 
Now into unprovoked tears,
Or, finally
Ask the lonely child
Of our desolate,
Silenced neighborhood
Who lost its mother
In a hail of bullets,
And now wanders aimlessly
Hither and thither.
Alas, ask all the peaceable Gentlefolk,
And today
They will all declare
With one voice-
"In war alone lies salvation."

Uddhar - Shamsur rahman
Translated by Syed Najmuddin Hashim