Ghazals 1–20 (Radif Alif)

Radif alif (الف)

1. Against whose playful pen does the picture plead?

Against whose playful pen does the picture plead?
Every figure drawn is dressed in paper robes.

Do not ask how hard it is to live on alone:
to bring night round to morning is to cut a river of milk through rock.

You should see the force of longing beyond control:
the sword's own edge breathes out beyond the sword's breast.

Let understanding spread the net of listening as wide as it likes;
the meaning of my world of words is the phoenix no one catches.

Ghalib, even in chains my feet are on fire:
each ring of my shackle is a hair curled by the 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 you will not give it back if you find a heart lying about.

You say you will not give it back if you find a heart lying about.
Where is the heart for you to lose? We have seen what you are after.

Through love my nature found the taste of living:
it found a cure for pain, and found the pain no cure can reach.

The friend is the rival's friend; so much for trusting the heart:
I found my sighs had no effect, my cries could not reach.

Simplicity and cunning, abandon and alertness:
I found beauty, in its seeming not to care, testing how bold I am.

The bud has begun to open again; today I found my heart,
the one I had seen bleed, the one I had 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 adviser's noisy counsel rubbed salt into the wound;
someone should ask him: tell me, what pleasure did you get?

5. Where, O Lord, is the second step of longing?

Where, O Lord, is the second step of longing?
I found the desert of the possible to be a single footprint.

6. My heart burned recklessly in its hidden fire

My heart burned recklessly in its hidden fire;
like a silent flame, it seems, it burned away.

Not even the wish for union or the memory of the friend is left in it;
such a fire caught this house that all there was burned down.

I am beyond non-being itself; else, heedless one, time and again
the phoenix's wing has burned up in my fiery sigh.

How can I tell the heat of the essence of thought?
I had only a passing thought of wild despair, and the desert burned.

I have no heart left, or I would show you a springtime of scars;
what shall I do with this festival of lamps? The one who lit it has burned.

Here I am, longing to grow cold, Ghalib, because the heart,
seeing how warmly the people of this world embrace, burned.

7. Longing turned out, in every guise, the enemy of comfort

Longing turned out, in every guise, the enemy of comfort:
even behind the veil of a painting, Qais came out naked.

O Lord, the wound gave no credit to my narrow heart:
even the arrow left the wounded breast with its feathers spread.

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

My grieving heart was a table spread with the pleasure of pain;
my friends took from it only what their lips and teeth could hold.

You who are new to the art of dying, whose courage loves the hard way,
it is a hard blow that even this task turned out to be easy.

Ghalib, weeping raised a tumult in the heart again:
alas, the drop that never came out came out a flood.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. In this world the mark of faithfulness brought no comfort

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.

11. 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.

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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. In the emperor's assembly the register of poems has been opened

In the emperor's assembly the register of poems has been opened:
O Lord, keep this door to the treasury of pearls open.

Night fell, and the scene of the shining stars opened again,
with such ceremony, as if the door of an idol-temple had been opened.

Mad as I am, why should I be taken in by a friend?
A dagger hidden in the sleeve, a lancet open in the hand.

Though I do not understand her words, though I do not find her secret,
is it a small thing that she, fairy-formed, has opened herself to me?

To think of beauty is like thinking of good deeds:
a door of Paradise stands open inside my grave.

When her face is not unveiled it is a state never seen before:
on that playful one's face her veil came off more loosely than her tresses.

She told me to stay at her door, and having said it, how she turned away,
in the time it took for my rolled-up bedding to be opened.

Why is the night of grief so dark? Calamities are descending:
tonight the eye of every star will stay open on that side alone.

How can I be happy abroad when events stand thus:
the messenger often brings the letter from home already opened.

I am of his community; why should my affairs stay shut,
Ghalib, when for that king the doorless dome was opened? (the Prophet, for whom heaven opened on the night of the Ascension)

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. I had to account for every single drop

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

Now here I am, mourning for a whole city of longing:
the mirror you broke was full of images.

Drag my corpse through the streets, for I
had given my life for the longing to lie at the head of the road.

Do not ask about the mirage-waves in the desert of faithfulness:
every grain of sand gleamed like the water in a sword's steel.

We too thought little of the grief of love, but now
we see that, once it was gone, there was the grief of the world.

19. It is hard enough for any task to come easy

It is hard enough for any task to come easy;
even a man cannot easily become human.

Weeping wants my little house in ruins:
the walls and doorway drip with becoming desert.

Alas for the madness of longing, that every moment
I go to her myself, and then stand there amazed myself.

Since the vision so insists on being looked at,
even the grain in the mirror's steel wants to become eyelashes.

Do not ask about the joy of the killing ground of those who long:
to see the sword unsheathed is a feast-day for the eyes.

We took into the dust the scar of longing for delight:
may you live, and bloom in a hundred colours like a garden.

The joy of a broken heart is to be wounded by longing;
the delight of a sore heart is to be drowned in the salt-cellar.

After she killed me, she repented of her cruelty:
alas for the remorse of one so quick to be sorry.

Pity the fate of that strip of cloth, Ghalib,
whose fate it is to be a lover's collar.

20. 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).