Exhibition Notes
Zarina: A Poetry Anthology
From artwork titles to catalogue excerpts, Sarah Burney indexes the array of poetic verses that have left indelible marks on Zarina's life and work, exploring the dynamic relationship between word and image in her lettered prints.
Sarah Burney • 24.07.2026
“Poetry was always a part of our life. In Indian and Islamic tradition you learn by memorizing things, and the measure of an educated person is determined by how many poems you can recite.”
Zarina sprinkled poetry into almost every conversation. She knew the perfect couplet for every occasion, and even after Alzheimer’s had begun its slow advance, she could still recall, recite, and explain them with remarkable precision. She carried within her a rich, cosmopolitan treasury of poetry, reflecting not only her itinerant life but also the kinship she found with fellow travellers, exiles, and philosophers.
Poetry was both an enduring source of inspiration and an emotional ground for Zarina. It is woven throughout her art and crescendos across the arc of her career: early winking references in titles give way to poetic epilogues at the close of her print portfolios, and ultimately to verses shimmering within her images. Urdu poetry held a particularly profound place in her practice. She proudly claimed the oral poetic tradition of her ancestors,1 using her art both to honour that literary inheritance and to introduce it to her increasingly global audience.
During the years I spent as Zarina’s studio manager, she often spoke of creating a small book that would gather all the poems she had quoted throughout her art, interviews, and exhibition catalogues. What follows is an incomplete facsimile of that idea. It is incomplete because I would never presume to know every poem that shaped her thinking or every interview she gave. It is a facsimile because I know Zarina would have transformed this simple concept into an artwork in its own right.
Instead, I hope this serves as an invitation to everyone who shared a bond with Zarina: to add the poems she shared with you, the verses she recited in conversation, or the lines that glimmer in your memory because of her. Zarina herself was a living, ever-expanding anthology.2
Urdu Proverbs
After killing 900 mice, the cat goes for Hajj
The burnt rope keeps its twist
Commemorating grandfather’s wake at the halva shop
The family cooking pot lies broken in the village square
Beating the trace after the snake has gone
The drum sounds sweet at a distance
Night is over and the promises
Out of sight, a mountain no longer there
One who goes blind at the time of the monsoon, sees green the rest of his life
Sprouting mustard seed while still on the palm of the hand
Ten woodcuts by Zarina: based on Urdu proverbs, 1991, Portfolio of 10 woodcuts printed in black on handmade Nepalese paper, 11 x 9 in (28 x 23 cm), Edition of 20. Published by the Women’s Studio Workshop. Images courtesy of the Women’s Studio Workshop, New York.
One broke away from the caravan, one became disillusioned with the faith.
The leader of the caravan did not have the gift of touching the heart.
Allama Iqbal
But the heart cannot let go of its loneliness
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Somewhere the flotilla of sorrow will come to rest
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
...These Cities Blotted into the Wilderness
Mirza Ghalib
Translated by Adrienne Rich
We shall show them Signs on the Horizons
and in their own Souls
Qur’an, Sura 41.53
I asked for a long life of four days… Two were
spent in longing and two in waiting
Bahadurshah Zafar
The Web
Which of my cities will I die in?
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Others will know it too and will forget it
Which language am I doomed to die in?
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Others will know it too and will forget it
What time will it be?
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Others will know it too and will forget it
These questions are digressions, not from fear
but from impatient hope,
part of the fatal web of cause and effect
that no man can foresee, nor any god
Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by Alastair Reid
To make a house without doors or walls
Mirza Ghalib
The vessel of my heart’s sorrow will eventually find shore
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
In search of the language of my pain
I find the essence of my existence
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Why ask where I come from, O dwellers of the east,
Knowing my homelessness you laugh as you taunt
Delhi that was once a select city in the world; Where only the chosen lived of every trade
Then the heavens looted it and left it desolate, I am a citizen, of that ruined place
Meer Taqi Meer
let me steady myself, O Hopelessness! What
disaster this is!
That even the vestment of the
thought of my beloved is slipping away from
me.
Mirza Ghalib
I don't have enough time to tie my end to my
beginning.
Mahmoud Darwish
Dark Night of the Soul
Saint John of the Cross
When the journey to God ends, the journey in God begins.
Ibne-Arabi
Faiz I don't know what happened to companions of the end of the night
the breeze did not come my way and morning went in another direction.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
But now I am no longer I, nor is my house any
longer my House.
Federico García Lorca
Beyond the stars, there are more worlds to come.
Allama Iqbal
How often have I filled my heart’s lap with the beauty of this world and the next ...
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Beyond the stars, there are more worlds to come
And tests of love, there are more to come
Allama Iqbal