OctPoWriMo Day 6. Slippage of Borders // Sarhadon Ki Phisalna [Ghazal]

OctPoWriMo Day 6. Who Controls Our Minds?

How can we use our sixth sense in our poetry? Many great poems start in one place, with one question, statement or idea, but through the writing of the poem, the poet ends up in another place. Follow those instincts. Let your poem leap, following free associations that may not seem to connect at first. Let those gut feelings guide you. We can also connect dream imagery with specific sensory details in the present, using dream symbols to inform our understanding of our poetic themes.

Example Poem: “Strangers” by Philip Larkin from Collected Poems(Aal) by Philip Larkin

Strangers

The eyes of strangers
Are cold as snowdrops,
Downcast, folded,
And seldom visited.

And strangers’ acts
Cry but vaguely, drift
Across our attention’s
Smoke-sieged afternoons

And to live there, among strangers,
Calls for teashop behaviours
Setting down the cup,
Leaving the right tip,

Keeping the soul unjostled,
The pocket unpicked,
The fancies lurid,
And the treasure buried

~Philip Larkin

Does this poem evoke a fear of strangers? With psychic powers would strangers remain strangers? Or are people only strangers because we cannot know what is in their minds? And if we cannot see into another’s mind, can we ever really know anyone?

Prompt: Use similes (comparative phrases using “like” or “as”) to describe suspicions of being controlled by another’s psychic powers. What does it feel like? Why that specific person? What is the experience like?

Possible form: Ghazal – How to Write a Ghazal Poem from Writers.com

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A note before you read: Tonight, I surrender the poem unfinished, not in words, but in language itself. I struggled with this prompt more than I expected. My intention was to craft a proper translation, a delicate blend of Hindi and Urdu (since I’m fluent in neither but familiar with both), once the English draft was done. But, all in vain. I tried all day, between work and everything else, and now, before I go to sleep, I’m just posting whatever I could piece together.

Slippage of Borders

They build embassies of silence in my mind,

trade in secrets, mapped but undefined, in my mind.

Each stranger’s face, a border checkpoint, stamped and signed,

but who grants them passage, me or the wind, in my mind?

A thought flickers like contraband light, confined

within some tiny disputed land, in my mind.

Dreams redraw frontiers while I sleep, aligned

to voices I’ve never met, yet they bind, in my mind.

The cities rearrange themselves when I sleep, aligned

to voices I’ve never met, yet they bind, in my mind.

Tongues grow maps, their whispers through keyholes, polite, refined,

their etiquette colonial, unkind, in my mind.

When I wake, the air smells of foreign rain combined

with tea and something I can’t find, in my mind.

And if every thought is theirs, disguised as mine,

then who signs the treaty at dawn—Oizys, in my mind?

~ Oizys.

Sarhadon Ki Phisalna

(Urdu/Hindi Roman Script)

Khamoshiyoñ kī safārton kā bayān mere zehan mein

Naqshoñ se binā mulk, bas nishān mere zehan mein

Woh raaz bechte hain jo likhe nahīñ kahīñ bayān mere zehan mein,

Unkī bāt har sarhad kā imkān mere zehan mein.

Koi khayāl jhilmil kartā taskaree rōshnī jaisā,

Qaid hai ek chhoti si zāmīn kā nishān mere zehan mein.

Shehr sote hue apnī soorat badal lete hain,

Khwāboñ se milte hain jo armaan mere zehan mein.

Zubāneñ naqsha ugātī hain, darwāzoñ se guftagu hoti,

Tahzīb-e-angrezāna rawayya, ek paimān mere zehan mein.

Subah hotī hai pardesī bārish kī mahek ke sāth,

Chāy ke sāth ghaṛī sa kōī elaān mere zehan mein.

Agar har khayāl un kā hai, merī soorat meñ lipṭā,

To sulah par kaun dastkhat kare—Oizys, nishān mere zehan mein.

~ Oizys.

P.S.: Still tweaking the translation here and there to make it sound truer. Not very proficient, so please, be kind. :(

An after-note: If you’d like to read something along similar lines — another ghazal that somehow came together more smoothly — here’s my piece from NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 8th): Ghazal: A Love in Revolt // Ik Ishq ki Bagawat Main.