Ghalib

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River in the Drop: Ghazals of Mirza Ghalib
Poems from the Urdu, based on literal translations by Aijaz Ahmad
By Jason Francisco

I.
Before God we are so carefree, so self-examining,
If He shut the mosque doors in our faces, we would just knock again.

We all accept Your claims to uniqueness;
no idol, as if a mirror, can meet You face to face.

Complaints kept from lips mark the heart:
kept from becoming rivers, single drops feed the dust.

If blood does not drip from each eyelash,
the story is not love, but only romance.

Can you see the river flowing in the drop?
Or are you content with children’s games?

II.
Occasionally, in a rose or a tulip, one of the faces--
what faces the dust must keep to itself!

The stars his all night behind the sky’s veils:
at dusk, what did they feel when they emerged, naked?

Sleep, and peace of mind are his, and night,
he on whose arms you spread your hair.

For us, God is one: our way of life is breaking our own patterns.
The continuous d eath of habits builds our faith.

If Ghalib continues to weep for this world,
your cities will be grown over by wilderness.

III.
She walks like an arrow shot from a tight bow.
The difficulty: to become a target in her heart.

She’ll slash my tongue at every word.
She wants to speak, only her.

I’m babbling this--whatever it is.
God willing, no one understands.

Who to adopt as a guide? Khizer, who knew the way out of death,
only teased Alexander when he followed.

Ghalib! How can you complain, having given up
knowing what to expect of anybody!

IV.
The Garden of Paradise about which the recluse is beside himself
is a mere bouquet in an obscure corner for we who live now in ecstasy.

In the hall of mirrors, the sight of you is the map;
sunbeams reflect in the world of dewdrops.

Hidden in my creations are ways of ruin:
the warm blood of the farmer promises revolt as the corn promises the sparks of threshing.

My silence hides thousands of eternal desires.
I am a gutted lamp on a destitute’s speechless grave.

Ghalib! The path of death always leads out from where we are:
it stitches the book of the world’s scattered pieces.

V.
It was not our luck to meet our love.
However long we lived, we would wait for the encounter.

If we lived on your promise, obviously we didn’t believe it.
Believing it we would have died of happiness.

The vein of the stone would have poured blood
if your grief cut open even a spark of fire.

She is incomparable: who can see her?
If there were a hint of camparison we would have met her somewhere.

The mystic speculations, Ghalib! And this speech of yours!
We would have thought you a seer if you didn’t drink so much.

VI.
With every step the goal recedes:
the desert runs from me at my very own speed.

A night of loneliness and grief blazing in my heart:
the shadow of night eluded me like a waft of smoke.

Through this mad desert, my footsteps, blistering,
leave a red track of pearls.

Because of you the goblet turns and blinks a hundred ways:
because of me the mirror is a single, astonished eye.

From my buring eye, Asad, a fire licks out.
When I turn my gaze, dry leaves spark and the soil smoulders.

VII.
Here I am, without shame:
I kept sitting even though they pointed and stared.

For my wine I’m pawning my shawl and prayer rug:
so long since we drank in an open banquet!

If I were ordained to, I would question this earth.
You miser, what did you do with our treasures?

She must have picked up this habit from someone:
now she gives kisses without being asked.

Intransigence is another thing. She’s not ill-willed.
In her forgetfulness she keeps her promises.

VIII.
The transports of drunken nights are over!
Arise! The joys of dreaming in the morning are gone.

My dust--dust I have become--is famous in my beloved’s street.
But now, oh wind, there is no desire for flying.

Quickly: look at her footprints!
Look at the flowers her walk has strewn!

Every lustful man now claims to worship beauty:
the ways of the true-sighted are lost.

Vision itself proved to be a veil:
when you appeared, my eyes spun in ecstasy around your outline.

IX.
Look at my luck that I envy myself:
that I should see her? How could I? How could I bear it?

If our apprehensions bring such heat, we should abandon the suffering heart.
The fire of the wine is about to melt the goblet.

How can she, oh God, forbid others their atrocities?
She shies away from her own anger.

My heart now will complain every instant.
If I stop for breath, it gets bewildered, flustered.

Asad! My shadow runs from me like smoke from fire.
My soul burns: who, if not my shadow, will stay with me?

X.
Your lover taunts me: carrying your letter so openly,
he might not conceal it even from a stranger.

This is her tenderness: even if she approached me willingly,
I couldn’t bring myself to touch her.

Whether I wait or not, death will come.
And my love for you? If you don’t come, I can’t even send for you.

Who can say whose vision it is?
God’s curtain is so much God’s--I can’t lift it.

Ghalib! I can’t fight love.
It is a fire I can neither light nor put out.

XI.
You should have waited for me a little longer--
but you went on alone. Now stay alone a little longer.

Dying, you said we would meet again on doomsday--
as if there could be another one!

You alone were the full moon, lasting one night.
Why did the house not remain the same?

You hated me and fought with Nayyar:
still you could have stayed to see your children grow.

Foolish, thouse who still wonder why Ghalib lives on.
It is his fate to stay alive, to wish for death a little longer.

XII.
The happiness of the drop: to die in the river.
When separation is unbearable, the pain is the remedy.

Our weakness: that our tears become mere sighs.
As if we believe that water turns to air.

After heavy rain, the spring cloud clears:
it weeps until it dies of grief.

The miracle of the polishing winds and mildew:
see the mirror turning green in spring!

The rose guards the desire to see, Ghalib!
However it changes, the eyes should be open!

XIII.
Look closely at the dew on the red poppy:
at the mark on her cruel heart sits her shame.

The dove, a handful of ashes, the nightingale, a prison of color.
Oh my cry, the scar of a burned heart is nothing!

Lust for fire takes over where fire itself ends:
the heart burns where the spirit trembles.

To claim to be love’s prisoner only betrays one’s compulsion.
The hand pinned under the stone promises eternal fidelity.

Oh sun! Shine here, too!
A strange time, like a shadow, has come upon us.

XIII.
These wings, like dust--weightless, decomposed--and the strong wind:
in any other case, feathers and wings would break apart.

A heaven-faced heaven is arriving: not a dust speck,
nothing on its entire path, sae the illusion of flowers.

The sight of the rose is merely an idea, intoxicating,
not like the walls, the door, the expanse of the wine cellar.

My own love has torn me down, brick by brick.
This house--nothing now but the will to have built.

Now, Asad, my verses are mere display:
the skill gathers nothing to the hours.

XIV.
Where are these meetings, these separations?
These days, nights, months and years are gone.

Who can indulge in love? Who has the time?
The delights of beautiful things have gone.

It all came from the vision of someone.
And the youth of the mind? Gone.

Weeping blood is no mere trick:
the strength and the nerve of heart...gone.

Ghalib! My limbs are feeble. They shake.
The world too is shaken in its elements.