Ghazals I

Ghazals I

Ghazal: Come, holding the longing for me in your heart

Come, holding the longing for me in your heart,
holding the wish to speak, and the taste for seeing.

Taking the heart, what all they keep themselves holding!
Those are the very glasses that hold my world.

I am fading away over the heart's deprivations:
the dust is holding the print of your foot.

I complain of the darkness of the air,
holding the sun of the heart's black core in my breast. [TN: *suwaida*, the black spot at the core of the heart.]

Once the business of life rested on my support:
now I am the one holding life's support.

The heart wishes the life of love would never end:
let one die holding the longing for someone.

Put the dignity of your love to the test some day:
the brow of beauty too will be holding a prostration.

I am as glad as though the night-lighting ruby were in my lap,
holding the desert tulip in my skirt.

I am a walking corpse; my life is an illusion of life:
I go about holding the bier of life.

Do not ask the state of rapture in the surge of madness:
we crossed the desert holding the desert with us.

When the head reaches her threshold, one may be sure
whether it holds madness or holds a prostration.

Even when we went to Sinai, we went in such style
that Moses stood there holding the White Hand. [TN: the shining hand of Moses, a miracle.]

Beauty, share in my state too:
I am alone, holding the burden of both worlds.

See Him unveiled, undefined, unnamed:
He holds only the veil of a name.

Seemab, the Khan of Jansath values me: [TN: Jansath, a town in the Muzaffarnagar district; the patron is not otherwise named.]
I have come holding the gift of my thought.

Ghazal: Come, for existence is without lips or ears without you

Come, for existence is without lips or ears without you:
the universe is a silent Resurrection without you.

Come, for no wave of joy rises in the heart again:
cold water is the heady wine without you.

Sleep comes and comes, and breaks off in remembrance of you:
the threads of the bed are lancets in the embrace without you.

The daily radiance that was in the fortune of every morning
is now a faint dream of yesterday without you.

Life was made of you; but when you are not,
who has any sense of his own life without you?

Come, for every eye is seeking the theme of the ghazal:
the minstrel's song is a plague on the ear without you.

Who knows when Seemab may give up his life in distress,
though restraint has so far striven to endure without you?

Ghazal: Come, let us create warmth again in the land of love

Come, let us create warmth again in the land of love:
let us make the White Hand from the clay of Sinai.

Let there be the scent of love in beauty, and the colour of beauty in love:
then let us arrange a world from new colour and scent.

All the songs that have been lost in the air of the age,
let us call them again and gather them in one instrument.

The cups of flowers that broke and mixed with the dust,
let us make them again into goblet and flask in the branch's hand.

Life is two days long, and on top of it all these inventions of worlds:
Seemab, let us make this much ready, and then what is there to do?

Ghazal: The tear that dripped from the eye became a star

The tear that dripped from the eye became a star:
today my skirt has become the skirt of the Pleiades.

What came into His mind? What happened to Him?
He hid Himself from the world, and Himself adorned the world.

How did the servant of meaning become a servant of form?
I wonder what I was to become, and what I have become.

Again imagination has raised the tune of the measured lament:
again from the darkness of thought a verse has been born.

Where now, in despair, are the glimpses of hope?
Those too were days, when grief for you became bearable.

Worn out by the excess of pain, I gave up my life:
today the purpose of my friend's cruelty was fulfilled.

The Brahmin said "Brahm", the shaikh spoke up, "Ahad": [TN: *Brahm*, God in Hindu thought; *Ahad*, "the One", a name of God in Arabic.]
from a twist of one word a quarrel arose between them.

See the radiance of unity and multiplicity in the creation of man:
one mote spread so far that it became the world.

Barbarism has a brisk market in the world:
the blood in the veins of humanity has run cold.

The nest was not yet built when lightning fell:
the garden was not yet settled when it became a desert.

From the excess of weeping the flood has reached my pillow:
have mercy, O Lord, for the water has risen above my head.

The brightness of our nest was a chance of the moment:
whenever some firefly flashed, there was light.

The more the heart was drawn in the cage toward the nest,
the farther the nest moved away from the cage.

We were travellers, we had no fixed abode:
when night came, wherever it came, there was our lodging.

Raees and Aali and Wasif and Nisar have taken their leave: [TN: poets of Agra, Seemab's city.]
little by little, Seemab, Agra has become empty.

Ghazal: Now, pitiless one, what is your command for it

Now, pitiless one, what is your command for it?
The ruined heart is born again from its own dust.

When imagination becomes the companion of the sad heart,
the world of the heart is peopled with your picture.

Why should the captives of faithfulness fear the decree of prison?
It is right here that the free nature is put to the test.

The tumult that finds no room in the heart's Resurrection on the night of grief
comes to dwell on silent lips.

Spring has come as far as the prison gate to welcome someone:
who knows, Seemab, who is being set free today?

Ghazal: What can I tell now of what I found in meeting you

What can I tell now of what I found in meeting you?
I came to know grief; I found the trace of myself.

When no known beggar was to be found far and wide,
your devotee went from your door and joined you.

I found the goal, I found my wish, I found my purpose:
I found everything when I found your footprint.

Self-seeing, self-knowing, self-showing, I found:
in the guise of man I have often found God.

Do not ask the bewilderment of one lost in beauty:
behind the veil of every mote I found a mirror.

I found you beyond the bounds of definition:
going a little past the goal I found your road.

Why are these seekers of God unsuccessful?
When I passed beyond the bounds of the self, I found God.

This was the one blessing that cherished man:
if I found the heart, what did Godhead find?

Either scrape the heart's wound and fling it from your breast,
or confess that you have found the mark of faithfulness.

Seemab was never seen in bloom all his life:
whenever we met the wretch, we found him acquainted with grief.

Ghazal: Give us leave to tell the tale of our grief

Give us leave to tell the tale of our grief,
to put your feeling and our tongue to the test.

We will waste even eternal life in love:
let us first squander the goods of this passing existence.

A few straws of the nest are plotting this:
to make the lightning somehow a captive of the nest.

Imagination, on the night of grief compel them to smile,
that by that light we may set our tale in order.

Seemab, where then would the creating of airs find a home,
if we made our heart careless of both worlds?

Ghazal: Perception does not know itself

Perception does not know itself:
otherwise, what is there not in man?

Why should I go looking for anyone?
I do not know where I am myself.

Why should I ask for a cup of pure wine?
What is there not in the cupbearer's glance?

Beauty, and kindness to love:
such a thing has never happened.

Seemab, in the garden, from the press of roses,
there is no room for a footprint.

Ghazal: Alas, youth has passed

Alas, youth has passed,
that moment of rapture and gladness.

What, has sleep come over the gathering?
We too had a story to tell.

I was the life of beauty and faithfulness:
you never knew my worth.

Still from the valleys of Aiman [TN: the valley of Sinai, where God spoke to Moses.]
comes the voice: "You shall not see Me." [TN: Arabic *lan tarani* (Quran 7:143).]

Seemab, turn now to God:
how long this mourning for youth?

Ghazal: The end of everything is nothing but dust

The end of everything is nothing but dust:
what is there in this world that is not straw and rubbish?

Tell her not to sit at ease after tormenting me:
the turning of the heavens is not for me alone.

Remove every imagined veil from the eyes:
the longing glance is not yet so sharp.

Do not judge madness by the torn collar:
madman, the hem of the heart is not yet torn.

Seemab, why pray for patience and calm?
The grieving heart is not fit for comfort.

Ghazal: The soul is taking leave of the body

The soul is taking leave of the body:
the prison of exile is becoming complete.

I am myself compelled to break off ties:
my nature is turning that way.

Her cruelty to the heart so quick to love
is in proportion to the love.

Infidel beauty has joined with God:
Godhead itself is being ruled.

The solitude of the prison is not complete:
I am growing wild even of my shadow.

You talk so, laughing and laughing,
as though wounds were being handed out.

If your creed has not changed, Seemab,
why is the pledge of discipleship being renewed?

Ghazal: What is a promise of faithfulness in the measure of longing

What is a promise of faithfulness in the measure of longing?
What limit is there to our longing?

The prayer that comes from the heart has effect:
here there is no heart; what prayer from the heart?

Those who say there is nothing in it now,
let someone ask them, what was there in me?

Over this we have no power, nor over that:
what of the beginning, and what thought of the end?

Long live the hem of hope, Seemab:
in love, what support is anyone?

Ghazal: Someone, bound by time, is announcing this good news

Someone, bound by time, is announcing this good news:
that someone is coming behind the veil of revolution.

Someone is bringing the self onto the road of Godhead:
someone is still testing the mind of man.

Where someone is wiping out the ruin of existence,
somewhere just there someone is making a new world.

Unveiling beauty is still hard:
someone keeps lifting the same veils already lifted.

The picture in the mind never gets finished:
someone keeps making the outlines and wiping them out.

If you are forgetting someone because of how it will end,
consider this, that someone is being forgotten too.

This proud smile at the words of a withered heart:
someone is teaching the bud to become a flower.

Praise for faithfulness is proof of faithfulness falling short:
I know someone is raising my courage.

The story of the garden's revolution is an old tale:
someone is telling a story already heard.

My faithfulness is acknowledged after I am gone:
happy fortune, someone is finding me by losing me.

What comfort there is in wildness in one's own shadow:
I think someone is coming along with me.

Seemab, may our longing have the fortune of Moses:
someone is calling us too toward Sinai.

Ghazal: With great delight the mornings and evenings of life will pass

With great delight the mornings and evenings of life will pass:
I shall look at her, and the whole world will be looking.

In separation I have raised my hands with such pain
that the prayer itself must be praying for success.

At the Judgement there will be a battle of shyness and longing:
she will be busy with her own concerns, and I with mine.

I would never have shamed the Judgement in the light of day:
how could I know the night of your separation would be so long?

What wonder, Seemab, if fire breaks out in the breast?
Thousands of hearts were filled with embers; it must have caught.

Ghazal: The burning of faithfulness increased in my fate

The burning of faithfulness increased in my fate:
what if you set fire to my heart?

What is called death is a sleep of self-forgetting:
where is passing away for one who passed away into you?

Servants of beauty, what arrangement is this?
To this day the lamp of Sinai lies unlit.

The bounds of being and not-being were left far behind:
where have I come, searching for you?

Even at the moment of killing, a prayer slipped from my lips:
I meant to say that love's due had been paid.

Yesterday in beauty's gathering there was a debate of pleading and airs:
Seemab, I have no news of what was decided.

Ghazal: Wake, and look a little at my desolate world

Wake, and look a little at my desolate world:
my collar has come out in the guise of the dawn. [TN: the torn collar of the madman is likened to the break of day.]

My naked body is nature's adornment of madness:
my helplessness is all my goods and gear.

Granted the hold of despair, admitted the force of deprivation:
I understand that my dying is not easy.

Pluck the buds, you who would ruin the garden's house,
but my plea is this: let my nest not be stripped bare.

Why do you now have its ruin in view?
You used to say, "The heart of man is my house."

Seemab, it was the grace of the glance of kindness and favour
that my record of sins became a word struck out.

Ghazal: Until the element of love's grief was found

Until the element of love's grief was found,
the heart could not have been formed in man's side.

I, and my madness for you; you, and this indifference:
perhaps nature compelled me.

A circle of motes was the sun of the mystic path:
perhaps it was your footprint.

You are the creator of pain, I am the servant of pain:
whenever I took your name, I must have clutched my heart.

Seemab, when her picture is not in this heart,
this mirror is clouded; what will this mirror be?

Ghazal: My lament is the bell in the caravan of the world's people

My lament is the bell in the caravan of the world's people:
my cry for mercy wakes the world.

In imagination she is a little cross, a little kind:
perhaps my story is being told to her.

Every mote is a desert, and every desert a world:
yet in this breadth of the world where is my room?

They take the trouble to criticise my wonder
who do not even know where my eyes are.

The deceit of the sleeping chamber of the passing world went on and on:
yet I slept, and my running life ran on.

That may be the very moment of her sudden coming,
whenever my sudden death comes, giving warning.

Let me not pine in the garden of Paradise for the pleasure of a common tongue:
Seemab, if only someone would teach the houris my language.

Ghazal: Wherever those who sit in your dust are gathered

Wherever those who sit in your dust are gathered,
most likely it is we who stand out among them all.

Why is my humble pleading a headache for her?
Why does she frown at my prostrations?

We are joined to her gathering by imagination:
when we close our eyes, we are right there.

Your radiance has surrounded me, friend:
now even the moments of solitude are beautiful.

Seemab, I hear that in these days retreat is a duty: [TN: *i'tikaf*, the devotional retreat of the last days of Ramazan.]
Ramazan has come; let us sit in the tavern.

Ghazal: The moment I died, darkness fell on the heart's place of radiance

The moment I died, darkness fell on the heart's place of radiance:
what became of the mirror that held your radiance?

When imagination raised the tune of the measured lament,
from a soundless instrument a verse was born.

Ask the deer of Najd about the miracle of love: [TN: Najd, the desert of Arabia where Majnun (Qais) wandered.]
whoever Qais's glance fell on became Laila.

Worn out by the excess of pain, I gave up my life:
today the purpose of my friend's cruelty was fulfilled.

Where now, in despair, is there room for restraint?
Those too were days, when grief for you became bearable.

The more the heart was drawn in the cage toward the nest,
the farther the nest moved away from the cage.

Little by little hundreds of radiances were absorbed into it:
Seemab, my heart became a picture from head to foot.