Proposal

My love, you are a princess, I but a wandering ascetic. The earth yearns for my bones, I scrape at its love. Shades and demons stride my way, the heavens hue dead. You lay, my love. In love, on love. My touch destroys, withers, inflames. I touch your life, your breast, your heart.

King’s daughter, naked vagabond

Opium paste, grind me thus

Eyes skyward, my abode

Regent’s blood, friendless I roam

Pull tight thy silks, cold night

I embrace, why love me?

O nightingale, hard icy hail

Lies silent, soft grass nay

Darkness I infest, why?

Princelings glance, opulence aye

Sufficience, marriage be

Forth, they lay, sufficience.

I am an ascetic, friend to spirits, I dance the dance of death, smoke is my abode, no truth my truth. You shall shiver, the cosmos will scream, will the fires frighten you.

Serpents coil round my neck, my matted hair, ash-smeared my visage, my furious glare.

I am the destroyer, no love I know, no love I bear.

Princelings with locks soft, await your tread, your assent, your care

Why venture love these matted hair?

Why climb, why leave

The love of the world

I love you, my love shall burn

This world, this instant, this universe is gone to ash.

The ash I smear on my forehead

The death of life, of love

Your hair on fire, the ruins of love

Is my love for you.

Manto's Prayer

I recently finished Bitter Fruit, the Saadat Hasan Manto omnibus. I would tell you how the man is probably the most brilliant South Asian person to put pen to paper, but I encourage you to read some his work yourself. Writing in Urdu, he wrote incredibly incisive and controversial short stories, many of his works landing him in court on obscenity charges. Besides, there is nothing that appeals to me more than a Muslim intellect with a mad streak of blasphemy. Here's Manto's Prayer:

Dear God, master of the universe, compassionate and merciful:

we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before your throne
and beseech you to recall from this world
Saadat Hasan Manto,
son of Ghulam Hasan Manto,
who was a man of great piety.

Take him away, Lord, for he runs away from fragrance and chases after filth.
He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths.
He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates sweetness, but will give his life to taste bitter fruit.
He will not so much as look at housewives but is in seventh heaven in the company of whores.
He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through filth.
Where others weep, he laughs; and where others laugh, he weeps.
Faces blackened by evil, he loves to wash with tender care to make visible their real features.
He never thinks about you but follows Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed you.