(This is an English translation of Taj Baloch’s Balochi poem Ómán)
All day
a heavy voice
coming from the gallery
tears through the trashes of my ears:
“Open the door”
Get up, I switch off the TV
draw open the window curtains
A white raven, visible for a moment
hidden for ages
laughs and pecks at the glass
Someone left
the eleventh storey of this house,
the locked gallery,
the needle and the cotton buds to our trust
Why you rake up the memories of that departed dear?
Why don’t you come to the door?
Tell me, “When will you come?”
All night
the same voice echoes
through the window
“Open the door”
Get up, I lift my head from the quilt
A butterfly wears the form of an old and haggard man
on its young and tender frame
in one moment it flits in the air
in the next at rest
“A djinn, a spirit or a fairy,
whosoever you are
come to fore”
The eleventh storey of this house,
the closed window
and rain, all remind me of someone
Why don’t you come to the door?
“Tell me when will”?
“Never”
Ever since someone has closed the door and left
walls of my house have grown eyes and ears
and glasses a tongue
I know there’s someone
who comes and calls out from one corner or the other
After you, look how your memories
play tricks on me
you will never return
but someone will await you forever!
Fazal Baloch teaches Urdu at Atta Shad Degree College, Turbat. He is the first regular translator of Balochi literature into English.
