2 Poems by Aftab Husain

A Dream Deffered

No, it was not
as I initially thought
at the second turn
of my mind
A mere reflection
in an empty looking-
glass               
mirroring nothing(ness)
at a place
still liveable

and I, envisioning
a perpetual longing outside
me,
sense a perplexed jouissance
that chills
my spinal chord
metaphorically


Misprison

Traversing
a densly written text
you have been misreading
life

You took mathematical equations
for poetry
And the other way round
You bloody bastard Borges!


Bionote

Pakistani poet Aftab Husain worked journalist and professor of literature before he went to exile in 2000. On the invitation of PEN International he reached Germany and lived there as fellow of Heinrich Böll Foundation. In 2003 he was invited to Vienna as ‘’writer-in-residence,’’ a collaboration of the Austrian Cultural Ministry and the city of Vienna. Presently, he teaches at Vienna University.

He has three books of poetry to his credit – in Urdu, Hindi and German. Widely published in various anthologies, his poems have been rendered into English, Italian, Persian, Bengali and other languages. He has translated German poet Paul Celan, among others, into Urdu for which he was felicitated by association of literary translators in Austria.   He is the editor of the bilingual magazine Words and Worlds.