Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Shameen Azad

print this page

The Most Beautiful Sweet Thing

                               I live where
the world’s most excellent fruits
                     and most respectable people are and
where the most beautiful birds build their nests.

Vulgar people live here too,
in filthy ditches brilliant waterlilies bloom.
The smell of children’s pee-soaked blankets
           surrounds the place,
and I live here, too, as excess.

I am the citizen of an extremely overpopulated country:
everything in it drowns at times
                    in the floodtide of the new moon.
Sometimes the swan’s neck emerges from the lava stream
                      glistening in the sun.
The dream pitcher doesn’t wait here for the touch
                      but simply floats away –
With such countless disgraces, unbearable wounds and pain
under the merciless gaze of the developed world
I live on in this country like this.

Because the world’s most amazing fruits
             have grown here,
the most respectable people
           the most beautiful birds,
I survive through the year, through rain and shine –
I survive with the indomitable longing
          for harvest’s golden grains
                   in this place, like this.

Translated by Syed Manzoorul IslamCarolyne Wright; Shameem Azad

Page(s) 53

Back to top