To be one with my beloved was not my destiny.
Had I continued living longer, it'd have been the same waiting!
2. I lived on your promise, thus-beloved, I knew it to be false.
For would not have I died of happiness, in case- I had faith!
3. Your delicacy made me understood that you have made a loose pledge.
You could have never broken it, had it been firm!
4. O’ someone should ask my heart about your half-drawn arrow.
Where would this pricking have arisen from, had it pierced the liver!
5. What kind of friendship is it, that friends have become critics.
If there had been someone as healer, if there had been an assuager of grief!
6. Blood would’ve unceasingly dripped from the veins of stone,
Had it, which you are considering grief, been a spark!
7. Grief is, invariably, life-consuming; still one cannot escape as 'tis a matter of passions!
Had there been no grief of love, there would've been sufferings of livelihood!
8. To whom would I confide that the distressing night is a severe catastrophe!
Would death be bad for me if I died once and only once!
9. Since my dying disgraced me-- why wasn’t I drowned in the river?
Neither my bier would ever have been carried, nor would anywhere be a tomb.
10. Who would ever be able to see Him, for unique is His Oneness!
If there had been even a sign of twoness, somewhere He’d have been encountered!
11. These inquiries into mysticism, this eloquence of yours, Ghalib!
We would’ve regarded you to be a saint, had you not been a wine-drinker
Translated from the original Urdu verse of Ghalib written around 1857.
