Cry

I’ve had the idea to use a photo I took of a statue in a shopping mall in Chicago for a while, but the final collage as you see above came out very differently than what I had in mind when I started. The picture kept changing as I worked on it. And I kept thinking about a song by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, written by Shiv Kumar Batalvi. The song I fell in love with the very first time I heard it in a music store in Anarkali bazar, Lahore, Pakistan, years and years ago. The song that has meant many things to me depending on where I am, what I am doing and how I feel. I thought I’d share some of the verses from that song with you (translation)

Mother, o mother,
The grains of separation sting
In the eyes of my songs
In the middle of the night ,
They wake and weep for dead friends.
Mother, I cannot sleep.

I am still young,
And need guidance myself.
Who can advise him?
Mother, would you tell him,
To clench his lips when he weeps,
Or the world will hear him cry.

Tell him, mother, to swallow the bread
Of separation.
He is fated to mourn.
Tell him to lick the salty dew
On the roses of sorrow,
And stay strong.

Listen, o my pain,
Love is that butterfly
Which is pinned forever to a stake.
Love is that bee,
From whom desire,
Stays miles away.

Love is that palace
Where nothing lives
Except for the birds.
Love is that hearth
Where the colored bed of fulfillment,
Is never laid.

Mother, tell him not to
Call out the name of his dead friends
So loudly in the middle of the night.
When I am gone, I fear
That this malicious world,
Will say that my songs were evil.