Let Me Think -- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Guest poem sent in by Radhika Gowaikar

(Poem #1442) Let Me Think You ask me about that country whose details now escape me, I don't remember its geography, nothing of its history. And should I visit it in memory, It would be as I would a past lover, After years, for a night, no longer restless with passion, With no fear of regret. I have reached that age when one visits the heart merely as a courtesy. -- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

I came across this while browsing the Poetry in Motion site.
[broken link] http://www.poetrysociety.org/postcard.html

Depending on the reader's mood this poem can be taken to be about many
things -- one's motherland, one's past lives and, indeed, one's past
loves. The overriding theme of time eroding every landscape holds for them
all.

Reading (poetry) is, to a large extent, about seeing one's own self -- the
way it is at that moment in time -- in a mirror provided by the writer
(/poet). I rather like this particular mirror.

radhika.

Links:
[broken link] http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,844795,00.html is a very
interesting article by Rushdie which has a lot about Faiz and other
things.

[broken link] http://www.dawn.com/2000/06/04/nat10.htm is also nice