fill your vases with water for spring is here

From the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984), translated from Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali.

Poem

You who wear shirts
ripped at the collars:

       it has come:
       the great calm
       with its harvest of silence:

       all lips have been sewn
       perhaps some wounds also.

And rebels,
my friends:

       fill your vases with water
       for spring is here:

       in this blossoming of wounds,

       some roses may also.

 

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