Rococo and Other Worlds

Afzal Ahmed Syed holds a unique place among contemporary poets of the Urdu language, as an acknowledged master of both the classical and modern Urdu poetic forms. The poems in Rococo and Other Worlds explore the mythology and historical realities of South Asia and the Middle East; their bold imagery creates narratives of voluptuous perfection, which remain inseparable from the political realities that Syed witnessed as a young observer of the violent separation of East Pakistan and emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 and of the Lebanese civil war in 1976. Musharraf Ali Farooqi's sensitive translations bring this extraordinary work to English readers for the first time.

from ROCOCO AND OTHER WORLDS—2000
Rococo and Other Worlds
Viewers' Choice
A Difficult Question
A Corroded Pin
The Spirit of the Lord
The Inaugural Plaque is Stolen
Spring Shall Return to the City
It Could Never Be
The Campaign to Introduce an Ice-Cream
A Girl
On A Political Party Being Allotted the Horse as its Election Symbol
Britannicus
Astronomy and the Poet
A Beginning with Great Names
A Dog's Death
Tell Me a Story
Soldiers Seize Virgil's Lands
The Ultimate Profession
from DEATH SENTENCE IN TWO LANGUAGES—1990
If My Voice Is Not Reaching You
The Last Date of Existence
You Live In Lovely Orbs
Poem
Zarmeena
The Genres of Poetry
To Live is a Mechanistic Torture
I Was Taken with an Indigo Flower
Whom One Loves
The Last Contention
Has Love Been Mislaid
Had We Not Sung the Song
Poem
Love
A Parable
Near Lavania
Those Who Own the Filly
A Couplet by Poet-Laureate Nubar Isbarian
Step into My Parlor
Poem
I Was Not Born To This Destiny• from AN ARROGANT PAST—1984
I Invented Poetry
The Clay-mine
I Was Not Given Life in Such Plenitude
If Someone Would Remember Me
What the Sea Said to You
If They Could Learn
To Live Another Day
If I Do Not Return
The Slaughter of Snow-Birds
Inclination
The Heart of a Poet
The Dirge of a Rabid Dog