Pencil III

My daughter,
My darling daughter
Sharpens her pencil.

Light begins
to spread in the sky
of white paper.

A black bird flies away
taking a tree along.
The glasses
on eyes of a peacock,
Fire chariot flying in air,
Airplane
running on the road,
A tiger
talking to a cow,
One-eyed sun
on a black tree,
And a piece of cloud over it,
Blue fish
flying overhead,
In the waves of a spring
a yellow butterfly swimming

My darling daughter
Engrossed,
What pictures she paints!

When a school master
Gives homework
My little doll
In her anger
Breaks the point of the pencil.
And the candle of pencil dies away,
In the sky of white paper
there remains
nothing but
the dark smoke.

From ‘Pencil aur doosri nazmein’

Pencil 3

My daughter

Little dear daughter

Lights a pencil

With a sharpener.

The sky of the white paper

Begins to be filled with light.

The black bird flying away with the tree;

Glasses on the eyes of the peacock;

The fire chariot flying in the air;

The airplane walking on the road;

The lion having a conversation with the cow;

A one-eyed sun on the black tree

With a patch of cloud over it;

A blue fish flying on the forehead of the cloud;

The yellow butterfly swimming in the waterfall.

My darling daughter,

In her ecstasy

Is busy drawing

Strange pictures.

But when the schoolmaster

Gives her homework,

My darling doll

Breaks the tip of the pencil

In anger,

And the candle of the pencil

Is  extinguished.

Only the smoke remains

On the sky of the white paper.

Tr. Baidar Bakht