Poems

by Shakir Shujaabadi

Hope against hope should never end
The beloved should never be defamed
Tonight she made this final vow:
May this evening never end

The literal translation of this poem was made by Nukhbah Langah

The final translated version of the poem is by The Poetry Translation Workshop

Notes

As with Shakir Shujabaadi's other poems, this deceptively simple lyric was far from easy to translate.

Gender is not marked in Siraiki and, in this poem, we decided to make the subject female rather than male, as in the literal version.

This is one in a long series of poems grouped by their forms, none of which has a title. Calling the poem 'Stanza' - the translation of 'Qutah' - seemed a bit bald, so we decided to add a title to the poem.

Very little contemporary poetry from Siraiki has been translated into English and we were very lucky that Nukhbah Langah brought these beautiful poems by Shakir Shujaabadi to our workshop.

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