Ghazals 19–35 (radif alif)

19. As an offering to grace, my gift is the shame of falling short

As an offering to grace, my gift is the shame of falling short:
my claim to purity is rolling in blood in a hundred colours.

Let not beauty that loves to be seen be shamed by faithlessness:
the claim to purity is sealed with a hundred glances.

Pay the alms due on beauty, O radiance of insight, so that, like the sun,
the begging bowl becomes the lamp of the dervish's house.

Careless one, you did not kill me knowingly, though I was guiltless; yet on your neck
the debt of our acquaintance stays like innocent blood.

The tongue's longing is lost in giving thanks for speechlessness,
which wiped out the demand to complain of helplessness.

It is the same thing that is breath here and the scent of the rose there:
the garden's radiance is the reason for my colourful song.

The mouth of every scolding beauty is a chain of disgrace:
faithless one, your faithlessness is talked of even in the realm of non-existence.

Ghalib, do not make your letter so long; write briefly,
for I am one who longs to tell the cruelties of separation.

20. If the grief of the night of parting is not spoken

If the grief of the night of parting is not spoken,
the scar on the moon will plainly become a seal upon my mouth.

If the evening of separation turns one's courage to water like this,
the moonlight will become a flood that sweeps away the house.

I could kiss her foot while she sleeps, but
such things would make that faithless one suspicious.

We thought the heart would be spent on faithfulness; how could we know
it would be sacrificed to the test before that?

You have a place in everyone's heart; if you are pleased with me,
it will be as if the whole world is kind to me.

If the warm glance keeps teaching restraint,
the flame will hide in the straw as blood hides in the vein.

Do not take me to the garden, or else, at my state,
every fresh rose will become an eye shedding blood.

Alas if there is no judgement between you and me on Judgement Day!
Until now my hope is that it will be done there.

What good is it? Think, Asad, you too are wise after all:
it is friendship with a fool; you will only lose your life.

21. Longing complains of lack of space even within the heart

Longing complains of lack of space even within the heart:
the ocean's restlessness was absorbed into the pearl.

I know it: you, and answer a letter!
Yet I am a victim of my love of writing.

If this is spring, then spring is henna on autumn's feet:
the world's pleasure is lasting heaviness of heart.

In the grief of parting do not trouble me to stroll in the garden;
I have no patience for the flowers' pointless laughter.

I still long to be intimate with beauty,
though every pore of my body does the work of a seeing eye.

We gave her our heart before she ever showed her airs and graces;
what patience have we for beauty's demands?

Do not say that weeping matches the heart's longing:
in my eyes is the whole income and spending of the ocean.

Asad, I look at the sky and remember her:
in its cruelty there is something of her way of ruling.

22. The drop of wine, from wonder, began to breathe

The drop of wine, from wonder, began to breathe,
so that the rim line of the wine cup became a string of pearls.

See how the credit of love ruins one's house:
the rival sighed, but she grew angry with me.

23. When the beloved packed the litter for a journey

When the beloved packed the litter for a journey,
the heat of longing tied a heart to every particle of dust.

In the wonder-house of coquetry, the people of insight
described the mirror's grain as a wounded parrot.

Despair and hope demanded a field of battle;
the weakness of my courage set up the magic of a beggar's heart.

Ghalib, the themes of thirsty longing could not be captured,
though I opened my heart and made even the river a shore.

24. No speck of earth in the garden is useless

No speck of earth in the garden is useless:
here even the path is the wick for the tulip's scar.

Without wine, who has the strength for the turmoil of awareness?
The weakness of courage has drawn the marking line on the cup.

The roses laugh at the nightingale's business:
what they call love is a disorder of the brain.

The intoxication of composing verse is not new to me:
I am an old addict of the lamp's smoke.

A hundred times I have been freed from love's bonds,
but what can I do when the heart itself is the enemy of ease?

Without the heart's blood the wave of the glance is dust in the eye:
this tavern is ruined in the search for wine.

Your blossoming garden is a carpet for the heart's delight;
whose mind could the spring cloud's wine cellar match?

25. She read my hidden grief in the furrows of my brow

She read my hidden grief in the furrows of my brow,
and the secret of my letter in its rambling address.

The mirror is still polished no more than a single alif (the straight first letter of the alphabet):
I have been tearing my collar ever since I understood.

Do not ask me to explain why my mind is so captive:
my heart grew so narrow that I took it for a prison.

Suspicion did not want her to walk out eagerly:
it took each bead of sweat on her face for a wondering eye.

From my own weakness I knew she would be ill-tempered:
from the pulse of the straw I knew the heat of the burning flame.

On love's journey weakness sought rest:
at every step I took my own shadow for a bedchamber.

Until death my heart ran from the beloved's eyelashes:
it thought warding off the arrowhead of fate was so easy.

Asad, why did you give her your heart, thinking her faithful?
You erred in taking an infidel for a Muslim.

26. Again I remembered my tearful eyes

Again I remembered my tearful eyes:
my heart, my liver, thirsted to cry out.

Doomsday had not yet caught its breath
when I remembered again the hour of your departure.

The simplicity of longing: that is,
I remembered again that magic of the glance.

Excuse my weakness, O heart's longing!
I was lamenting, and I remembered my liver.

Life would have passed anyway;
why did I have to remember your street?

Alas, where is that courage to cry out?
Tired of my heart, I remembered my liver.

My thoughts go again to your lane;
it seems I have remembered my lost heart.

What a quarrel there will be with Rizwan (the keeper of paradise)
if I remember your house in heaven!

What desolation, desolation itself!
Seeing the wilderness, I remembered my home.

Asad, as a boy I once raised a stone at Majnun,
then I remembered my own head.

27. Dry-lipped in thirst, I am the shrine of the dead

Dry-lipped in thirst, I am the shrine of the dead,
a place of pilgrimage for the sorrow-hearted.

All hopelessness, all suspicion,
I am the heart of those deceived by faithfulness.

28. Tyrant, you were never anyone's friend

Tyrant, you were never anyone's friend;
others suffer cruelty such as I never suffered.

The hand of fate let me go like the moon of Nakhshab (a false moon made by an impostor),
though the sun had not yet become its equal.

Ability has always matched courage:
in my eyes is the drop that never became a pearl.

Until I saw the sight of the beloved's stature
I did not believe in the turmoil of Resurrection Day.

Simple-hearted, I am glad the beloved is displeased,
since the lesson of longing had not been repeated.

The sea of sins dried up from its shallowness:
not even the hem of my robe had become wet.

Asad, my revenue came from the scar on my heart;
the fire-temple had not yet become the estate of the salamander.

29. Last night, when she lit up the private chamber of honour

Last night, when she lit up the private chamber of honour,
the thread of every candle was a thorn in the lantern's robe.

The henna that grows for miles around the lover's tomb:
Lord, how it died longing to kiss her feet!

I saw no fruit of love but the breaking of desire:
heart joined to heart was like one lip of regret.

How can I describe the leisure of grief's sickness?
The heart's blood I drank owed nothing to digestion.

30. She looked in the mirror and was left with a look of her own

She looked in the mirror and was left with a look of her own:
how proud the lady was of not giving her heart!

Do not behead the messenger with your own hand;
it was not his fault, the fault was mine.

31. I am no longer fit to offer love's devotion

I am no longer fit to offer love's devotion:
the heart I was proud of is that heart no more.

I go carrying the scar of longing for existence;
I am a snuffed candle, no longer fit for the gathering.

O heart, find another way to die, for I
am no longer worthy of the killer's hand and dagger.

The mirror's door is open on all six sides:
here there is no longer any difference between flawed and perfect.

Longing has untied the strings of beauty's veil:
nothing now stands between us but the gaze.

Though I stayed pledged to the cruelties of the times,
I was never unmindful of thoughts of you.

The wish to sow faithfulness has left my heart, for there
no harvest remains but longing for a harvest.

I do not fear love's cruelty, but, Asad,
the heart I was proud of is that heart no more.

32. Jealousy says, "Alas for her sincerity to the rival!"

Jealousy says, "Alas for her sincerity to the rival!"
Reason says, "That heartless one, whose friend is she?"

Every particle is a cup in the tavern of enchantment:
Majnun's wandering knows the winks of Laila.

Longing furnishes the pride of the helpless:
the speck knows the desert's wealth, the drop knows the ocean.

I, and that piece of calamity, my wild heart, which is
the enemy of peace and the friend of wandering.

We should not complain of jealousy of each other:
my knee is my companion, and the mirror your friend.

Asad, the mountain-digger painted only one image of Shirin:
dashing his head on stone, he still found no friend.

I am collyrium freely given to the eye; my price is this:
that the buyer's eye stays in my debt.

Give me leave to lament, lest, cruel one,
my hidden grief should show on your face.

33. The careless one, fancying her charms, adorns herself; otherwise here

The careless one, fancying her charms, adorns herself; otherwise here
not even a lock of grass lacks the comb of the breeze.

Do not expect the pleasure of longing from the gathering of cups, for colour
is a bird escaped from the net in this hunting ground.

If mercy accepts it, it is not far-fetched:
not offering excuses for sin, out of shame.

With what joy I go to the killing field,
for the skirt of my gaze is filled with roses from the thought of wounds.

Asad, my life is spent longing for one warm glance:
the moth is the advocate for your plaintiff.

34. Delicacy cannot show itself without some coarseness

Delicacy cannot show itself without some coarseness:
the garden is the verdigris on the mirror of the spring breeze.

The shore's self-restraint is no match for the river's surge:
where the cupbearer is, any claim of sobriety is void.

35. The joy of the drop is to lose itself in the river

The joy of the drop is to lose itself in the river;
pain, passing all limits, becomes its own cure.

From you, in my fate, like a combination lock,
it was written that we part the moment things come right.

The heart was spent in the struggle to treat its pain:
in the rubbing, the knot's chance of opening was worn away.

Now we are denied even cruelty; good God,
to become such an enemy of the faithful!

From weakness, weeping turned into cold sighs:
now we believe that water can turn to air.

For the thought of your hennaed fingers to leave my heart
is like the nail being torn from the flesh.

For me it is like the spring cloud raining and then clearing:
to vanish, weeping, in the grief of separation.

If the scent of the rose does not long for your street,
why does it become the dust of the breeze's wandering path?

Ghalib, the show of roses gives a taste for seeing:
the eye should open to every colour.

So that the miracle of the polishing air becomes clear to you,
see how in the rains the mirror turns green.