Not All, Alas! Perhaps A Few

Not all, alas! Perhaps a few,

In rose and tulip manifest –

What beauteous forms departed lie

Beneath the earth in hidden rest!

 

The lust'rous joys of revelry

Imprinted on my memory –

Their sights and sounds no longer stir,

While form and feature are a blur.

 

When in a skylight-dingy cell,

The apple of his eye was flung,

Though aged Jacob could not tell

Precisely where: his love still clung

And light flowed in on Joseph from

The sightless eyes of Israel.

 

Let streams of blood from these eyes flow –

The night of parting has begun:

Behold these weeping orbs of mine,

Transformed into two lamps that glow!

 

His are the nights, he knows true bliss,

He sleeps true sleep, he laves in balm –

Your lovely locks and silken curls

Cascade upon whose blessed arm.

 

 

The Seven Sisters fair, concealed

Behind the blinding veil of day,

In darkest night lie all revealed,

Their glitt'ring naked charms display:

What shamelessness does them possess

To so expose their loveliness.

 

When entered I the garden fair,

A new Parnassus sprang up there:

On hearing my lament and wail,

Sweet dirges sang the nightingale.

 

Why do those glances pierce my Soul,

From eyelids veil'd which emanate:

Alas! Averted is that gaze –

Misfortune's mine, I curse my fate!

 

When Man to Sorrow is inured,

Then Grief at last extinguished lies:

So many crises I've endured,

That here Catastrophe now dies.

 

For all the sorrows Ghalib felt,

His pent-up pain had wept away –

The habitations of the Heart,

His flood of tears had swept away.

Basharat Qadir