Daud Kamal (1935-1987), Pakistan’s most accomplished poet, taught English literature at Peshawar University for nearly three decades. His poems, which are in English, convey a sense of loss and spiritual displacement in the face of violence and cultural erasure. Kamal’s first book, Reverberations (1970), consists of translations of the classical Urdu poet, Ghalib. His original poems in English appeared in Recognitions (1979), A Remote Beginning (1985), and in such posthumous volumes as Rivermist (1992), Before The Carnations Wither (1995) and A Selection of Verse (1997). Kamal’s translations of the Urdu poets Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi, Munir Niazi and Ahmed Faraz appeared in Four contemporary poets (1992).
The Rebel (poem)
They
stood him up
against an orchard wall
and shot him
at dawn.
Pandemonium of crows
and then
the empty horizon.
Hundreds of miles away
his mother
kneels in prayer –
in ignorance –
the ignorance of prayer.
Wheat ear on the stubble –
the blind earth
must be fed.
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