الغزليات ١–١٨ (رديف الألف)

Radif alif (ا)

1. Whose playful pen does the picture lodge its complaint against?

Whose playful pen does the picture lodge its complaint against?
Every figure in the portrait wears a paper robe.

Do not ask how hard it is to endure the pain of loneliness:
to turn evening into morning is like digging a channel for a river of milk.

Behold the power of uncontrollable longing:
the sword's very breath has broken out of the sword's breast.

Let understanding spread the net of listening as wide as it likes:
the meaning of my speech is the anqa (a mythical bird that no one has ever caught).

Ghalib, even in captivity my feet are on fire:
each link of my chain is a hair that has passed through flame.

2. Wounds for a present, diamond dust for a gift, a scarred heart for an offering

Wounds for a present, diamond dust for a gift, a scarred heart for an offering:
congratulations, Asad, the comforter of aching souls has come.

3. No one but Qais (Majnun, the lover of Laila who fled to the desert) ever came forward to act

No one but Qais (Majnun, the lover of Laila who fled to the desert) ever came forward to act;
yet the desert itself was as narrow as the envious eye.

Frenzy put the black spot on my heart in order:
it became clear that the scar's only capital was smoke.

In a dream my fancy had dealings with you;
when my eyes opened there was neither loss nor gain.

I still take lessons in the school of the heart's grief,
but only this: "it went" and "it was".

The shroud covered the stains of my nakedness;
otherwise, in every garment, I was a disgrace to existence.

Asad, the mountain-digger could not die without his axe:
he was dazed by the hangover of rites and restraints.

4. You say, "We will not give back the heart if we find it lying about."

You say, "We will not give back the heart if we find it lying about."
Where is a heart to lose? We have found what we sought.

Through love my nature found the taste of living:
I found the cure for pain, and found a pain that has no cure.

Simplicity and cunning, abandon and alertness:
I found beauty testing courage through its indifference.

The bud began to open again; today we saw our heart
slain in blood, and found it lost.

I do not know the state of the heart, only this much:
I searched for it many times, and you found it many times.

The uproar of the counsellor's advice sprinkled salt on the wound;
someone should ask him what pleasure he got from it.

He is a friend of my enemy! So much for trusting the heart:
I found my sighs ineffective and my laments unable to reach.

My heart burned recklessly with a hidden fire,
like a silent flame, it burned as if it spoke.

No taste for union, no memory of the beloved, is left in my heart:
such a fire struck this house that all it held is burned.

I am beyond even non-existence; otherwise, careless one, many times
the wing of the anqa has burned from my fiery sigh.

How can I describe the heat of thought's essence?
A thought of madness crossed my mind, and the desert burned.

Otherwise I would show you a springtime of scars, but I have no heart:
what can I do with this lamplit festival when its master has burned?

I am left with nothing but a longing for coldness, Ghalib, for my heart
burned at the sight of the world's way of showing warmth.

5. Longing in every guise proves the rival of what one possesses

Longing in every guise proves the rival of what one possesses:
Qais stayed naked even behind the curtain of a painting.

The wound did not do justice to my narrow heart, O Lord:
even the arrow left the victim's breast fluttering its feathers.

The scent of the rose, the heart's lament, the smoke of the gathering's lamp:
whatever left your gathering left in disarray.

My longing heart was a feast of the pleasure of pain;
my friends' share was only as much as their lips and teeth could take.

O novice of self-annihilation, whose courage loves what is hard!
How very difficult that this task, too, turned out easy.

Ghalib, weeping raised a tumult in my heart again:
the drop that had not come out as a tear came out a flood.

6. He died of a threat who was not made for battle

He died of a threat who was not made for battle;
combative love wanted a real man.

Even in life the fear of death was with me:
my colour was pale before it ever flew.

I was compiling volumes of faithfulness;
the collection of my thoughts was still loose leaves.

The heart, as far as the liver, is now the shore of a river of blood;
on this road there was once a show of roses, and dust before that.

Does love's struggle with sorrow ever end?
Even if the heart was lost, the heart's pain remained.

My friends could not cure my madness:
even in prison my thoughts roamed the wilderness.

This unshrouded body belongs to wretched Asad;
may God forgive him, he was a rare free spirit.

7. The counting of rosary beads pleased the idol who loves the hard

The counting of rosary beads pleased the idol who loves the hard:
the spectacle of carrying off a hundred hearts in one palm pleased him.

Thanks to having no heart, lasting despair is easy;
ease liked the hard knot we had tied.

The urge to stroll among roses mirrors the killer's indifference:
he liked the way the wounded one rolled in blood.

In this world the mark of faithfulness brought no comfort;
it is a word that was never fulfilled by a meaning.

The green down of your cheek could not subdue your unruly curls:
even this emerald was no match for the serpent's breath.

I wanted to be freed from the sorrow of faithfulness;
that tyrant would not agree even to my dying.

Let my heart at least be a path for thoughts of wine and cup,
if my breath could not be the road to piety's goal.

I am content even with your not making a promise, for my ear
never owed a debt to the song of comfort.

Whom should I blame for my bad luck?
I wanted to die, and even that did not happen.

Ghalib died from the shock of a single movement of the lips:
so weak was he that he could not bear even the breath of Jesus.

8. The ascetic so praises the garden of Rizwan (paradise)

The ascetic so praises the garden of Rizwan (paradise),
yet it is only a bouquet on the forgotten shelf of us who are lost to ourselves.

How can I describe the cruelty of the probing eyelashes?
Each drop of my blood is a bead in a rosary of coral.

Even the killer's might could not stop my laments:
the straw I held in my teeth became a fibre of the reed-bed.

I will show you a spectacle if time gives me the chance:
every scar on my heart is the seed of a cypress of lamps.

Your radiance so transformed the hall of mirrors
as the sun's reflection turns the world into a field of dew.

A form of ruin lies hidden in my very building:
the lightning that burns the harvest is made of the farmer's warm blood.

Grass has sprung up all over the house; behold the desolation:
my doorkeeper's living now depends on digging out grass.

Hidden in my silence are a hundred thousand longings turned to blood;
I am a dead lamp, voiceless, on a stranger's grave.

A reflection of the image of the beloved still remains:
my withered heart is like Joseph's prison cell.

You must be sleeping in a rival's arms somewhere today; otherwise
why would you come to my dream with secret smiles?

Who knows whose blood has turned to water?
It is a calamity that your eyelashes are wet with tears.

Ghalib, the path to annihilation is always before my eyes,
for it is the binding that holds the scattered pages of the world together.

9. A whole desert of weariness will not lessen my zeal

A whole desert of weariness will not lessen my zeal:
my footprint is a bubble on the wave of my going.

I once loved the garden, but now I am so out of sorts
that a waft of rose scent leaves me gasping.

10. Wholly pledged to love, yet bound to the love of existence

Wholly pledged to love, yet bound to the love of existence,
I worship the lightning and grieve for the harvest.

Cupbearer, even the hangover of thirst is measured to the cup:
if you are a river of wine, I am the shore's yawning mouth.

11. It is you who are not privy to the songs of the secret

It is you who are not privy to the songs of the secret;
otherwise every veil here is the curtain of a musical instrument.

A faded colour is the spring dawn of beholding:
this is the hour for the flowers of coquetry to bloom.

You, and your swift glances towards others!
Me, and my pain from your long eyelashes!

I hold back my sighs only to spare myself; otherwise
I am food for a single soul-melting breath.

The flasks are leaping so with the ferment of wine
that every corner of the mat is the head of a bottle-juggler.

The heart demands more probing, for still
the fingernail owes a debt to this half-opened knot.

Asad, my breast, which was a treasury of the pearls of secrets,
has been plundered by the probing grief of separation.

12. Last night, when the lightning of my heart's burning turned the clouds' courage to water

Last night, when the lightning of my heart's burning turned the clouds' courage to water,
every ring of the whirlpool was a whirling flame.

There, the excuse of rain held back her steps from coming;
here, from weeping, my pillow's cotton was the foam of a flood.

There, in adorning herself, she thought of stringing pearls;
here, in the crowd of tears, the thread of my gaze could not be found.

There, the show of roses had lit up the stream with lamps;
here, pure blood flowed from the lashes of my wet eyes.

Here, my troubled head was a wall-breaker from sleeplessness;
there, her proud head was lost in a pillow of brocade.

Here, my breath lit the candle of a gathering of self-forgetting;
there, the show of roses spread a carpet for a company of friends.

There, from floor to heaven, was a storm of waves of colour;
here, from earth to sky, was a chapter of burning.

Suddenly, in this manner, it began to drip pure blood:
the heart that had delighted in the probing of the fingernail.

13. Last night my heart's lament lacked any sign of effect

Last night my heart's lament lacked any sign of effect:
it was rue burnt in the rival's gathering of union, restless though it was.

How joyful the heart is at the coming of the flood!
The lover's house had been only an instrument for the sound of water.

What can I say of my pride in the days I sat in ashes?
The side of my thought was given over to a bed of sable fur.

My own madness, unable to reach its goal, did nothing; otherwise here
every particle could rival the world-lighting sun.

Why do you not care for your captives today?
Until yesterday your heart too was a chapter of kindness and faithfulness.

Remember the days when every ring of your net
was a sleepless eye waiting for prey.

Last night I held Ghalib back; otherwise you would have seen
the heavens become the foam on the flood of his weeping.

I had to give account of every single drop:
the blood of my heart was a trust held by the beloved's eyelashes.

Now there is only me and the mourning of a whole city of desire:
the mirror you broke was full of images.

Drag my body through the streets, for I
had given my life to the love of the roadside.

Do not ask about the mirage-waves of the desert of faithfulness:
every grain of sand gleamed like the temper of a sword.

I too thought little of love's grief, but now
I find it was what was left when the world's grief diminished.

14. It is so hard for any task to become easy

It is so hard for any task to become easy:
even a human being cannot easily become humane.

Weeping wants the ruin of my dwelling:
wilderness drips from its doors and walls.

Alas for the madness of longing, which every moment makes me
go there myself and then be bewildered myself.

Beauty so demands to be looked at
that even the mirror's grain longs to become eyelashes.

Do not ask about the joy of the killing-ground of those who long:
the baring of the sword is a festival for the eyes.

We took into the dust the scar of longing for joy:
may you be, and blossom in a hundred colours like a garden.

The joy of a piece of the heart is to take the wound of longing;
the pleasure of a sore heart is to be drowned in a salt-cellar.

After killing me he repented of his cruelty:
alas for the repentance of one so quick to repent.

Ghalib, pity the fate of that cloth four knots long
whose fate is to become a lover's collar.

15. Last night my hangover of longing for the cupbearer was like the Day of Resurrection

Last night my hangover of longing for the cupbearer was like the Day of Resurrection:
to the very edge of the ocean of wine, everything looked like a house of yawning.

One step of madness opened the lesson of the book of possibility:
the path was the binding that held together the pages of both worlds' desert.

Who can stop Laila's wild wanderings?
The house of desert-roaming Majnun had no door.

Do not ask how beauty's show of indifference was exposed:
her hand was pledged to henna, her cheek pawned to rouge.

The heart's lament scattered the leaves of my heart's pieces to the wind;
the memorial of that lament is an unbound divan (collection of poems).

16. What effort will friends make in consoling me?

What effort will friends make in consoling me?
Will the nails not grow back by the time the wound heals?

If the honoured counsellor comes, my eyes and heart will be spread on his path;
but someone explain to me what he will explain.

Your indifference has gone beyond all limits, kind master; how long
shall we tell the state of our heart, and you only say, "What?"

Today I go there with sword and shroud tied on;
what excuse can he now make for not killing me?

If the counsellor has imprisoned me, very well, let it be so;
but will these ways of love's madness leave me?

We are born servants of her tresses; why would we run from chains?
We are captives of faithfulness; why would prison frighten us?

Asad, there is now a famine of love's grief in this flourishing city;
granted, we will live in Delhi, but what will we eat?

17. How many pleasures of action desire has!

How many pleasures of action desire has!
If there were no dying, what would be the taste of living?

What is the point of pretending not to know?
How long, O you who are all coquetry, what is this, what is that?

I see favours given where they do not belong;
why complain of colourful complaints?

I want a fearless glance;
what use are indifferences that test my composure?

The blaze of a burning straw lasts one breath:
what does desire care for the honour of faithfulness?

Breath is a wave in the ocean of self-forgetting:
why complain of the cupbearer's neglect?

I have no head for robes perfumed with scent:
why grieve over the wanderings of the morning breeze?

The heart of every drop is an instrument playing "I am the ocean":
we belong to it; who would ask about us?

Listen, you who plunder the goods of faithfulness, listen:
what sound does the breaking of the heart's price make?

Who ever claimed to be stout-hearted?
What is the patience of a lover's heart worth?

Why this murderous promise that tests one's patience?
Why this faithless mischief that robs one of strength?

Ghalib, her every word is a torment to the soul:
her phrasing, her hints, her graces!

18. Asad, I am a beggar running mad, without head or foot

Asad, I am a beggar running mad, without head or foot,
my back-scratcher is the claw of a gazelle's eyelashes.