I had the pleasure of introducing Aisha Abbasi's poetry with this paragraph once before in TAP and am pleased to be able to do so again. Aisha Abbasi, training and supervising analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, wrote her poems originally in Urdu, which is her native language. Abbasi trained as a physician at Fatima Jinnah Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan. She did her psychiatric residency at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Her Urdu poetry has been published in Takhleeq (Creation), which is a literary magazine in Lahore. She regularly presents her work at Mushairas (Urdu poetry readings), which are held in Michigan yearly and are attended by Urdu poets from India, Pakistan, and Canada.
Abbasi collaborated on the translation of her poetry with Carlo Coppola. Coppola earned a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago, where he studied Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, and Pali. He cofounded and then for 39 years functioned as the coeditor of the Journal of South Asian Literature. He is active in organizing and participating in programs on applied psychoanalysis. He was named Distinguished Friend of Psychoanalysis by the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute in 2002. He currently teaches at Oakland University where he is professor of modern languages and literatures and professor of linguistics.
Coppola remarks that every translator knows/should know:
Translation is utterly impossible, but…one does it anyway. One does not merely translate words, phrases, sentences, etc.; one translates cultures, world views, belief systems…Translation is a thankless task; not everyone will be pleased with the results, especially the author, if s/he is totally honest with the translator Generally, the most effective and affective translations have been collaborative; the author working with a translator (preferably a person of letters him/herself) whom the author respects. The Italian expression Tradutorre tradditore (Translators [are] traitors!) is true. Every act of translation is essentially an act of betrayal of one language to another; the justification is, if one is lucky, a glimpse of the original in the target language.
SADNESS
(Udasi)
Sadness,A soul-stinging serpent,Spews black venom inside me—Clasps me closeLike an old friend,So that its sharp dagger fangsMoisten with my blood.I had never imaginedBeing away from you would give such pain;I feel as if a black sky has burst within meAnd a few of its starsDescended into my eyesAnd glittered on my cheekAs tears.This must be an old, old painFrom a previous separation—You * could not yet mean so much to me.
*The speaker uses the formal Urdu second-person pronoun, ap, here rather than the informal tum.
IF ONLY
(Kas)
If only he were hereLife would improve;Throughout the darkness of my beingLight would spreadAnd for a moment, into my eyes,Moonlight would descend.Merely from his beingThe atmosphere/expanse/plain/courtyard (faza) would be intoxicated/giddy;In the love-magic,The air itself would be lost—If he were here,Who knows what I'd be—If only he were hereIf only he were here.
(Translated from the Urdu by the author and Carlo Coppola)
Sheri Butler Hunt, M.D., is a graduate analyst in the adult and child divisions at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. A published poet and member of TAP‘s editorial board, she welcomes readers’ comments and suggestions at .