Before The Rain By Lianne Spidel In Hindi/Urdu Translation Poem by Ravi Kopra

baarish aanay k kuch minut pehlay
main uth baitha hoon
aur k har jeev jantu ki
ruki hui saanasaiN sunta hoon,
lagata hai jaisay kisi door kamray main
phone sirf ek baar hi bajaa ho
ya darwaaza andheray main charmaya ho.

shaayed meray kisi poorvaj k geen
mujay draa detey hain
kutumb ka koi yoda khaDa hua
sakht sardi main jheel ki chattan par
rakhwaali karta hua.

-to be con'd


Before the Rain
BY LIANNE SPIDEL

Minutes before the rain begins
I always waken, listening
to the world hold its breath,
as if a phone had rung once in a far
room or a door had creaked
in the darkness.

Perhaps the genes of some forebear
startle in me, some tribal warrior
keeping watch on a crag beside a loch,
miserable in the cold,

though I think it is a woman's waiting
I have come to know,
a Loyalist hiding in the woods,
muffling the coughing of her child
against her linen skirts, her dark head
bent over his, her fear spent
somewhere else in time,

leaving only this waiting,

and I hope she escaped
with her child, and I suppose she did.
If not, I wouldn't be lying here awake,
alive, listening for the rain to begin
so that she can run, the sound
of her footsteps lost, the sight
of them blotted away on the path.