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Father in Dream

2010; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 84; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2010.0186

1945-8134

Gulammohammed Sheikh, Saleem Peeradina,

Indian History and Philosophy

Two Poems Gulammohammed Sheikh Untitled The fruitof sleep, peeled offand sliced, may destroy all eternal delusions, symbolsmay vanish, gods would turn tailand desert the stones. Waxen mosques and minarets would get soaked, likeknolls ofmoss. Mountains would drop off to sleep and slowly juice of grape would drizzle through the sieve of sky. We all, the well-set pawns on a chessboard, would scatter i-you-he-we-you-they-all, all ofus would litteraround likepebbles shaken up ina box. Perhaps amystery greater than thedoomsday may emerge, perhaps a silence deeper thandeath would grow and we allwould survive consuming it. TranslationfromGujarati ByHemang Desai Father inDream Father I saw you again, yesterday thousands ofmiles away fromhome, here on the shore of theBalticwhere I lie asleep. You stood bymy bed in thisstrange land in the same patched, wrinkled coat you wore when you reconciled quarrelling brothers. On grandfather's death you must have stood exactly like this holding the lonely old man's shrivelled hand. When did youmigrate fromKathiawad to join the refugees ofCrimea? Leaving behind theBhogavo river,crossing Bhadar, Climbing bastions ofRoman forts with a postman's bag on your shoulder, you descended down here. And look, the cemeteryhas followed inyourwake. (Whydo I see your grave inevery burial ground?) Brothers come shadowing your trail. (Is thedispute not settled yet?) And there,on theedge of thehorizon, supported by a cane,mother struggles through theglaze ofher cataract to locatemy bed. Mother, I toohave lostmy sight. The childhood I thought Iheld in thepalm ofmy hand, has just fallen somewhere under thisbed. Translation from Gujarati By SaleemPeeradina and theauthor Gulammohammed Sheikh was born in 1937 inSaurashtra (Gujarat). In 1955 he went to Baroda to study painting and obtained his master's degree in 1961 from the M.S. University. He started teaching art his tory and painting between 1966 and 1982 and lectured on contemporary and traditional arts of India at home and abroad. He has held solo exhibitions since 1960 and participated ingroup exhibitions in India and abroad since 1959 while involved ina modern Gujarati literaturemovement. Between 1969 and 1973, Sheikh co-edited and published Vrishchik, a journal of arts and ideas. In 1974 a collection of his poems, Athawa, was published. He was conferred Padmashri by the government of India in 1983. Hemang Ashwinkumar Desai (b. 1978) isa writer, translator, and academic working inGujarati and Eng lish. With two collections of poetry, Samikaran (Equation) and Aghori and Other Poems, to his credit, he has translated many Gujarati and Marathi writers into English and Gujarati, respectively. Saleem Peeradina, Associate Professor of English at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan, isthe author, most recently, of The Ocean in My Yard (Penguin, 2005), his prose memoir of growing up inBombay. His poetry appeared inthe November 2009 issue ofWLT. 141 World Literature Today ...