Ghazals 21–40 (Radif Alif)

Radif alif (الف)

21. 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?

Your indifference has passed all bounds, my lord; how long
shall I tell you the state of my heart, and you say, "What?"

If the honoured adviser comes, my eyes and heart will carpet his path;
but will someone explain to me what he will explain?

Today I am going there with my sword and shroud tied on;
what excuse will she find now for not killing me?

If the adviser has had me locked up, very well, let it be so;
but will the ways of love's madness leave me?

We are born servants of her tresses; why would we flee a chain?
We are captives of faithfulness; why would a prison frighten us?

Now, Asad, in this crowded city there is a famine of love's sorrow;
granted that we stay in Delhi, but what shall we live on?

22. It was not my fate to meet my love

It was not my fate to meet my love;
had I lived longer, I would only have waited longer.

If I lived on your promise, know that I knew it was false,
for would I not have died of joy, had I believed it?

From your delicacy I knew the bond you made was frail;
you could never have broken it, had it been strong.

Let someone ask my heart about your half-drawn arrow:
where would this ache come from, had it gone clean through?

What kind of friendship is this, that my friends have turned advisers?
If only one had found a cure, if only one had shared my grief.

From a vein of stone would have dripped blood that never stopped,
if what you take for grief had been a spark.

Grief may tear the life out of us, but how can we escape, while there is a heart?
Had it not been the grief of love, it would have been the grief of the world.

To whom shall I tell what it is? The night of grief is a cruel thing;
I would not have minded dying, had it been only once.

Since I was disgraced by dying, why was I not drowned in the river?
No funeral would ever have been carried out, no tomb raised anywhere.

Who could see Him? He is One, without a second;
had there been the least scent of twoness, we would have met Him somewhere.

These questions of Sufism, and your telling of them, Ghalib!
We would have thought you a saint, had you not been a drinker.

23. Desire takes delight in so many things

Desire takes delight in so many things;
if there were no dying, what would be the taste of living?

What do you gain by feigning not to know?
How long, you who are all coquetry, will you say "What? What?"

I see your favours given where they are not deserved;
what is there to complain of in your colourful complaints?

I want a look that holds nothing back;
why these neglects that test my patience?

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

Breath is a wave of the ocean of self-forgetting;
why complain that the saqi neglects us?

I have no head for the scent of your dress;
why grieve that the morning breeze goes wandering?

The heart of every drop is a lute that sings "I am the sea":
we belong to it; why ask about us?

What is there to hold back? I stand surety; look this way.
What is the blood-price for those slain by a glance?

Listen, you who plunder the goods of faithfulness, listen:
what is that sound of the heart's value breaking?

Who ever claimed to have a strong heart?
What patience can a lover's mind possibly have?

Why does this killer make promises that test endurance?
What is this unbeliever, this trouble that robs me of my strength?

Ghalib, everything about her is the bane of my life:
how she speaks, how she hints, how she moves!

24. When no one deserved wrath and anger as I did

When no one deserved wrath and anger as I did,
what is wrong in saying no one like me was ever born?

Even in worship we are so free and self-regarding
that we came back again when the door of the Kaaba was not opened.

Everyone accepts the claim of your uniqueness:
no mirror-browed idol ever stood face to face with you.

It is no small pride to share a name with the beauties' eyes: (a sick eye, languid, was the lover's praise of the beloved's eye)
your sick one, what is the harm if he never got well?

That cry is the scar of the breast which never reached the lips;
that drop is food for the dust which never became the river.

The pain that has my name is the one no one else received;
the trouble in my work is the one that was never raised.

If blood does not drip from every hair's root at the telling,
it becomes the tale of Hamza, not the talk of love. (the Dastan-e-Amir Hamza, a long tale of adventure)

If you do not see the Tigris in the drop and the whole in the part,
it is a children's game, not the seeing eye.

The news was hot that Ghalib would be torn to shreds;
I too went to watch, but there was no show.

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. My pain never owed a debt to medicine

My pain never owed a debt to medicine:
I did not get well, and that was not bad.

Why do you gather my rivals?
It made a show, but it was no complaint.

Where shall I go to try my luck,
when you yourself would not try your dagger on me?

How sweet your lips must be, that my rival
was cursed by them and did not find it bitter.

The news is out that she is coming,
and today, of all days, there is not even a mat in the house.

Was it the godhead of Nimrod,
that my worship brought me no good?

I gave my life, but it was His gift to begin with;
the truth is that the debt of truth was not paid.

If the wound closed, the blood did not stop;
if the work stopped, it did not go on.

Is it highway robbery or stealing hearts?
The heart-stealer took my heart and went on her way.

Recite something, for people are saying
that today Ghalib has sung no ghazal!

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. That I should come away thirsty from the wine party like this?

That I should come away thirsty from the wine party like this?
If I had sworn off drink, what had happened to the saqi?

There is one arrow on which both are skewered:
gone are the days when my heart was apart from my liver.

Ghalib, I would believe it if something could be done in helplessness:
when the thread had no knot, the nail could untie knots.

33. Even if I had not wept, my house would have been a ruin

Even if I had not wept, my house would have been a ruin:
if the sea were not a sea, it would have been a wilderness.

Why complain of the narrowness of the heart? It is that infidel heart
which, had it not been narrow, would have been scattered.

After a lifetime of piety he might at least have let me in:
if only Rizwan himself had been the keeper of my friend's door. (Rizwan, the keeper of Paradise)

34. When there was nothing, there was God; had there been nothing, God would have been.

When there was nothing, there was God; had there been nothing, God would have been.
My being is what drowned me; had I not been, what would I have been?

When grief had made me so numb, why grieve that my head was cut off?
Had it not been severed from my body, it would have rested on my knee.

It is a long time since Ghalib died, but he is remembered still
for saying at every turn: "Had it been so, what would have been?"

35. 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?

36. 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.

37. Again I remembered my weeping eyes

Again I remembered my weeping eyes;
my heart and soul came thirsting for lament.

The day of doom had not yet caught its breath
when I remembered the hour you went away.

Ah, the innocence of longing!
Again I remembered that magic of a glance.

The excuse for falling behind, O longing heart!
I was lamenting, and I remembered my wounded soul.

Life would have passed somehow in any case;
why did I remember the road you walk?

What a quarrel I shall have with the keeper of Paradise
if I remember your house when I am there.

Ah, where is that daring to cry out?
Tired of the heart, I remembered the soul.

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

What a desolation, what a wilderness!
Seeing the desert, I remembered my home.

Asad, as a boy I once picked up a stone
to throw at Majnun, and I remembered my own head.

38. If I was late, there was a reason for the delay

If I was late, there was a reason for the delay:
you were coming, but something held back your reins.

It is wrong of me to blame you for my ruin;
there was a touch of my own good fortune in it too.

If you have forgotten me, shall I give you a sign?
There was once a quarry tied to your saddle-strap.

In prison your madman still remembers the same tresses,
though yes, the weight of the chains was a burden too.

What if a flash of lightning crossed my eyes!
You might have spoken, for I was thirsting for your words.

I called her Joseph and she said nothing; that was lucky,
for if she had flared up, I deserved to be punished.

Why should seeing the rival not cool my heart?
I was lamenting, yes, but I also wanted my lament to work.

There is no shame in a trade; do not mock Farhad;
among us the crazed, he too was a young chief.

I stood there ready to die; she did not come near; so be it;
after all, that playful one had an arrow in her quiver.

We are seized for what the angels wrote, and wrongly;
was anyone of ours there while they were writing?

You are not the only master of Rekhta, Ghalib;
they say there was a Mir in times gone by.

39. 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.

40. 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.