Performative reading of Sara Shagufta’s poem, How Solitary is the Moon for Womanifesto 2020: Gatherings, Voices in the Courtyard, Baroda. December 20, 2020
HOW SOLITARY IS THE MOON
The shadow of a cage is too an imprisonment
I continue to become the shadow of my clothing
My hands become a part of others
The mud is now lorn
Why did the river travel on its own to the sea?
How solitary, the act of choice
Severed, I am severed from those who die
And I wake arising in the fires
I am reverberating in the stones
I am drowning in the mud, wondering which tree ahead lies
My sorrows; thy name is child
In my hands, toys in pieces
In my eyes, humanity
A multitude of bodies are asking me for eyes
I do not know where my own beginning is
The skies are younger than I
Flight does not require a landing
Whose voice do hands represent?
You will have to live with my lies
When you enter the jungle and free the birds
The lantern gets a taste of fire
I hang clothes out to dry on the roof of my person
Sara Shagufta was a Pakistani poet who wrote experimental, confessional, and political verse in Urdu and Punjabi. She was born in 1954 in the Punjabi city of Gujranwala, lived most of her life in Karachi, and after a series of hospitalizations and suicide attempts, was killed by a train in Drigh Colony, Karachi, in 1984. Shagufta’s short life was troubled by controversy and hardship, beginning with her first marriage at the age of seventeen and the subsequent death of her infant son. She was known as both a brilliant artist and a sharply critical feminist in her time, but she was also shamed for her independence, and her pursuit of love and sexual liberation. Her poems boil with the sorrows and difficulties of pregnancy and motherhood, revel in the love that emerges from human connection, elegize the beauty of the natural world, and sing for justice for the poor, the forgotten, and the overlooked. Two collections of her poems, Aankhen (Eyes) and Neend ka Rang (The Color of Sleep), were published posthumously.
HOW SOLITARY IS THE MOON
The shadow of a cage is too an imprisonment
I continue to become the shadow of my clothing
My hands become a part of others
The mud is now lorn
Why did the river travel on its own to the sea?
How solitary, the act of choice
Severed, I am severed from those who die
And I wake arising in the fires
I am reverberating in the stones
I am drowning in the mud, wondering which tree ahead lies
My sorrows; thy name is child
In my hands, toys in pieces
In my eyes, humanity
A multitude of bodies are asking me for eyes
I do not know where my own beginning is
The skies are younger than I
Flight does not require a landing
Whose voice do hands represent?
You will have to live with my lies
When you enter the jungle and free the birds
The lantern gets a taste of fire
I hang clothes out to dry on the roof of my person
Within my distance lies an eye
I dress myself in my pain
I, she who dresses herself in garb of fire
Should I tell you the name of my shade?
To you I give the moons of every single night.
Sara Shagufta
Sara Shagufta was a Pakistani poet who wrote experimental, confessional, and political verse in Urdu and Punjabi. She was born in 1954 in the Punjabi city of Gujranwala, lived most of her life in Karachi, and after a series of hospitalizations and suicide attempts, was killed by a train in Drigh Colony, Karachi, in 1984. Shagufta’s short life was troubled by controversy and hardship, beginning with her first marriage at the age of seventeen and the subsequent death of her infant son. She was known as both a brilliant artist and a sharply critical feminist in her time, but she was also shamed for her independence, and her pursuit of love and sexual liberation. Her poems boil with the sorrows and difficulties of pregnancy and motherhood, revel in the love that emerges from human connection, elegize the beauty of the natural world, and sing for justice for the poor, the forgotten, and the overlooked. Two collections of her poems, Aankhen (Eyes) and Neend ka Rang (The Color of Sleep), were published posthumously.
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/sara-shagufta