Bang-e-Dara: gazales, y En memoria de mi difunta madre

11. I want the very utmost of Your love

I want the very utmost of Your love;
see my simplicity, what I want!

Be it cruelty or a promise to unveil,
I want something that will test my patience.

May Paradise bless the ascetics;
for I want to stand face to face with You.

I am only a little heart, but so bold
that I want to hear that very "You shall not see Me".

I am a guest for a moment, people of the gathering;
I am the lamp of dawn, about to go out.

In a crowded gathering I have spoken the secret;
I am very insolent; I want to be punished.

12. O awaited Reality, appear for once in the garb of form

O awaited Reality, appear for once in the garb of form,
for a thousand prostrations are throbbing in my humble brow.

Know the joy of clamour; you are a melody, be known to the ear;
what is a song that stays hidden in the silence of the lute's veil?

Do not keep it so carefully; your mirror is a mirror
that is dearer, when broken, in the eye of the mirror-maker.

Circling the candle, the moth said: that old power
is neither in your tale of burning nor in my story of melting.

Nowhere in the world did I find refuge; and where I found it,
my ruinous sin found it in Your gracious forgiveness.

That warmth is gone from love, that playfulness from beauty;
that ardour is gone from Ghaznavi, that curl from Ayaz's tresses.

Whenever I bowed my head in prostration, a voice began to come from the ground:
"Your heart is in love with idols; what will you gain from prayer?"

13. Strange are their ways, unlike the whole age

Strange are their ways, unlike the whole age;
O Lord, from what town do these lovers come?

Even in curing pain I am dying for the pleasure of pain;
the thorns that were in my blisters I drew out with a needle's point.

O Lord, may the garden of my hopes flourish and flower;
I have reared these plants by giving them my heart's blood.

The silence of the stars makes me weep at night;
my love is strange, and strange are my laments.

Do not ask me the pleasure of living homeless;
I have built hundreds of nests and set them on fire.

Estrangement from a fellow traveller on the road is not good;
wait, O spark, we too are bound to vanish in the end.

The hope of houris has taught the preacher everything;
this gentleman looks simple, artless and innocent.

Why should my verses not be dear to me, Iqbal?
They are the pain-filled laments of my broken heart.

14. If you were not to come, why should I argue?

If you were not to come, why should I argue?
But what shame was there in making a promise?

Your messenger gave away every secret;
what fault in this, my lord, was your servant's?

In a crowded gathering you singled out your lover;
how alert your eye was in its intoxication!

There was some hesitation in her coming, messenger,
but tell me, what was the manner of her refusal?

Moses was drawn of himself towards Sinai;
how strong was your pull, O longing to behold!

Your name is mentioned everywhere, Iqbal;
there was some spell in it; what was your speech?

15. Let no one look at the spectacle with the outward eye

Let no one look at the spectacle with the outward eye;
if one would see, let one open the eye of the heart.

For Mansur the speaking lip became the message of death;
who now should claim to love?

If you long to see, close your eyes;
this is seeing: that one should not look.

I am the utmost of love, you the utmost of beauty;
should one look at me, or gaze at you?

The beauty of the Friend is what excuses the crime of love;
let no one invent a new excuse on Judgement Day.

This longing glance cannot be hidden, my friend;
how else then should one look at them?

What was Moses thinking, to dig in his heels on Sinai?
If one has the strength to see, then let one ask.

For gazing, even this flutter of the eyelashes is a burden;
one should look at you with the narcissus's eye.

What delights there are in longing would be revealed
if someone longed for me for a day or two.

16. Do not look on the garden of being as a stranger

Do not look on the garden of being as a stranger;
it is a thing worth seeing; look at it again and again.

You have come into the world like a spark; see to it
that this passing life does not slip away from you.

Granted, I am not worthy of seeing You;
look at my longing, look at my waiting.

If the taste for seeing has opened your eyes,
see in every road the print of the Beloved's foot.

17. Those I searched for in the heavens and on the earth

Those I searched for in the heavens and on the earth
turned out to be dwellers in the dark house of my heart.

When our own reality became plain to our eyes,
the house itself turned out to dwell within the house of the heart.

If it had known something of the taste for bowing the brow,
the threshold stone of the Kaaba would have gone and joined the brows.

Have you ever looked at yourself, O Majnun?
Like Laila, you too sit veiled in the litter.

The months of union fly past like hours,
but the hours of parting pass like months.

What, O boatman, will you keep me from drowning?
Those who are to drown go down in ships.

He who hid His beauty from Moses, who spoke with God,
is the same Maker of grace who shines in the graceful.

The wave of their breath can light a candle that has gone out;
O God, what lies hidden in the breasts of those who have a heart!

If you long for the heart's pain, serve the faqirs;
this pearl is not found in the treasuries of kings.

Do not ask about these wearers of patched cloaks; if you have devotion, look at them:
they sit with the White Hand of Moses in their sleeves.

The splendour of the gathering, for whose sight the unreaching eye pines,
lies in these very lovers of seclusion.

Burn the harvest of your heart with such a spark
that even the sun of the Last Day is among your gleaners.

For love, find a heart that is ready to break;
this is a wine that is kept in delicate glass.

He who loves His beauty becomes beauty from head to foot;
tell me, heart, is there any such beauty among the beautiful?

Someone was thrilled by your gesture, "We have not known You",
and your rank stayed high above all the makers of grace.

Show them your beauty plainly for once;
for a long time now the subtle have been talking about you.

Hush, O heart! It is not good to cry out in a crowded gathering;
courtesy is the first of the ways of love.

That I should think ill of them is not possible for me,
for I too, Iqbal, am among my own fault-finders.

18. Stay joined to the tree, and keep the hope of spring

The branch that broke from the tree in the season of autumn
cannot turn green again with the clouds of spring.

For it the reign of autumn will never end;
it has nothing to do with leaf and fruit.

In your garden too the season of autumn holds sway;
the rose's pocket is empty of pure gold.

The birds that sang in the privacy of the leaves
have taken leave of your shady tree.

Learn a lesson from the broken branch, for you
are a stranger to the way of the world.

Keep a firm bond with the community;
stay joined to the tree, and keep the hope of spring!

19. In Memory of My Late Mother

Every particle of the world is a prisoner of fate;
planning is only a veil over compulsion and helplessness.

The sky is compelled, the sun and moon are compelled;
the restless stars are compelled to move.

The end of the bud in the garden is to break like a jug;
the grass and the rose too are compelled to grow in the garden.

Be it the nightingale's song or the silent voice of conscience,
everything is a prisoner in this world-embracing chain.

When this secret of compulsion becomes clear to the eye,
the flowing flood of tears dries up in the heart.

The dance of joy and grief no longer stays in the human heart;
the song remains, but not the pleasure of its rise and fall.

Knowledge and wisdom rob us of our store of tears and sighs;
the heart that knows is, as it were, a piece of diamond.

Though there is no freshness of dew in my garden
and my eye holds no wealth of crimson tears,

I know, alas, the secret of human suffering;
the lute of my nature is empty of the note of complaint.

The tale of the changing times is not on my lips;
my heart is not amazed, not laughing, not weeping.

But your picture is a messenger of constant weeping;
ah, it is the refutation of my firm philosophy!

The foundation of the soul stands firm through brimming tears;
the stone-hearted intellect is put to shame by the knowledge of pain.

My mirror is bright with the wave of the smoke of sighs;
my lap is filled with a treasure brought by water.

I am amazed at the miracle of your picture,
which has turned round the very flight of time.

It has set past and present, as it were, side by side;
it has made me know my childhood again,

when that frail life was nursed in your lap
whose tongue did not yet know how to speak,

and which is now talked of for the boldness of its speech,
and whose pearl-scattering eye sheds priceless pearls.

The grave speech of learning, the understanding of age,
the splendour of worldly honour, the pride of youth:

we come down from the heights of life,
and in a mother's company remain a simple child.

We laugh without ceremony, free from care;
we live again in that same lost paradise.

Ah, who will wait for me now at home?
Who will grow anxious when my letter does not come?

I shall come to your grave with this lament:
who will remember me now in the prayer of midnight?

Through your upbringing I came to share the fortune of the stars;
the house of my forefathers became a store of honour.

In the book of being your life was a golden page;
your life was all a lesson in faith and the world.

All your life your love was my servant;
when I became fit to serve you, you passed away.

That young man, tall in stature like a lofty cypress,
who gained more than I did from serving you,

my companion in the business of life,
your image in love, my right arm:

he weeps for you like a helpless little child;
morning and evening he weeps, a stranger to patience.

The love whose seed you sowed in the field of our souls
has grown firmer through our sharing of grief.

Ah, this world, this house of mourning for young and old!
In what spell of yesterday and tomorrow man is held captive!

How hard is life, and how easy death!
In the garden of being death is as cheap as the breeze.

There are earthquakes, lightnings, famines, sorrows:
what daughters the mother of days has borne!

Death in the hovel of poverty, death in the mansion of wealth,
death in desert and valley, in city, garden and wasteland.

Death raises a storm in the silent sea;
ships go down in the embrace of the wave.

There is no power to complain, no strength to speak;
what is life but a collar that chokes the throat!

In the caravan there is nothing but the cry of the bell,
nothing but the wealth of a tearful eye.

But this time of trial too will come to an end;
there are other ages still behind the nine veils of the sky.

What if the tulip and rose in this garden have their breasts torn?
What if the nightingales are compelled to lament and cry?

The bushes in whose cage the sigh of autumn is imprisoned,
the breeze of eternal spring will turn them green.

What if our spark lies asleep in the trampled dust?
What if this handful of dust is our passing litter?

The end of the fire of life is not ashes;
this is not a pearl whose fate is to be broken.

Life is so beloved in the eye of Nature
that the wish to preserve life is in the nature of all things.

If the pattern of life could be erased by the hand of death,
the order of the universe would not have made death so common.

If it is cheap, then know that death is nothing,
just as sleep does no harm to living.

Ah, heedless one, the hidden secret of death is something else;
what the transience of the pattern reveals is something else.

The pattern of air upon water is a paradise to look at;
the restless wave breaks and builds the bubble,

then hides it again in the wave's skirt;
how pitilessly it erases its own pattern!

If the wind could not make its bubble again once it was made,
it would not be so careless in breaking it.

What effect has this way on the form of the building?
It is the proof of the wind's power to build.

As if the nature of being were not a martyr to longing,
as if it were not searching for a finer form!

Ah, the scattered quicksilver, the stars that light up the sky,
these bright sparks whose burning owes its debt to night:

theirs is the span before which reason bows its head;
the whole story of mankind is a single hour of theirs.

And then this man, whose sight reaches beyond the heavens,
who is purer in his purposes than the angels,

who shines like a candle in the gathering of Nature,
in the breadth of whose nature the sky is a single point,

whose very ignorance is restless for truth,
whose fingernail is the plectrum for the lute of being:

is this flame less than the sparks of the sky?
Is our sun worth less than the stars?

The eye of the flower's seed is wakeful even under the earth;
how restless it is to grow and flourish!

The flame of life that lies hidden in this seed
is compelled to show itself, to increase itself.

Even the cold of the grave cannot chill it;
even pressed in the dust it cannot lose its burning.

It comes up from its grave as a flower;
from death, as it were, it receives the robe of life.

The grave binds together this scattered force
which casts its lasso round the neck of the sky.

Death is the name for the renewal of the taste for life;
it is a message of waking in the veil of sleep.

For one used to flight, flying holds no fear;
death in this garden is nothing but the weighing of wings.

The people of the world say that the pain of death has no cure,
that the wound of parting is healed by the balm of time.

But the heart, where the grief for the dead lives on,
is free from the chain-links of morning and evening.

The cry of mourning is not stilled by the spell of time;
time is no balm for the wound of parting's sword.

When some calamity suddenly falls upon the head,
tears flow on and on from human eyes;

the heart becomes bound to lament and crying;
the heart's blood flows from the eyes' well of tears.

Though man is deprived of the strength to endure,
there is in his nature this unknown sense:

the essence of man is never acquainted with non-being;
it vanishes from the eye, but it does not perish.

The baggage of being is reduced to dust by grief's scattering of flame;
this fire is cooled by the water of that subtle sense.

Ah, this holding back of cries is not the silence of heedlessness;
this comfort of the heart is knowledge, not forgetting.

When dawn shines out from the veil of the east,
dawn washes the stain of night from the hem of the horizons;

it dresses the withered tulip in a robe of fire,
it makes the voiceless bird drunk with song;

song is set free from the prison of the nightingale's breast;
the morning breeze is alive with hundreds of melodies.

Those asleep in the tulip field, the mountain and the river valley
are at last embraced by the bride of life.

If this is the law of being, that every evening has its dawn,
why should the night of man's grave not end in dawn?

My silver net of imagination holds the horizons;
with it I have taken your memory captive.

My heart that knows pain is filled with your memory
as the air of the Kaaba is filled with prayers.

That chain of duties which is called life
has millions of passing worlds as its places of appearing.

Each stage of being has its own ways and paths;
the hereafter too is a field where life runs its course.

There, fruitlessness is for the field of death;
the air and water are kind to the seed of action.

The light of nature is not the prisoner of the body's darkness;
the circle of human thought is not so narrow.

Your life was brighter than the moon;
your journey was finer even than the morning star.

May your tomb be lit up like the palace of dawn,
may this earthly bedchamber of yours be filled with light.

May the sky shed dew upon your grave,
and fresh green grass keep watch over this house.