This poem was translated by Professor Carlo Coppola as part of the MULOSIGE Translations project. You can explore our collection of Urdu Poetry here.

Professor Carlo Coppola, Oakland University

Jab aur ab /Then and Now

Once it was so that my love had the tickling of lullabies,

The softness of new shoots, the freshness of new buds;

Once it was so that my love was a song of bubbling youth,

And now, it is so that your voice has become like a blank, lost voice

And no one knows from which corner of the earth it is coming,

Haltingly, suffocated, filtered through a thousand veils.

.

From: Yāden̲ (Remembrances), 1963. p. 83

Once it was so that my love had the tickling of lullabies,

The softness of new shoots, the freshness of new buds;

Once it was so that my love was a song of bubbling youth,

And now, it is so that your voice has become like a blank, lost voice

And no one knows from which corner of the earth it is coming,

Haltingly, suffocated, filtered through a thousand veils.

.

From: Yāden̲ (Remembrances), 1963. p. 83