Faded, smouldering evening is about to be extinguished;

Now night will come freshly bathed from the moon’s stream;

And—the demands of eager eyes will be fulfilled;

And—these longing fingers will touch those hands.

Is it her scarf, her cheek, her garment?

It must be something which makes the lattice glow.

Who knows whether in the imaginary, dense shade of those tresses,

The earring glimmers even now!

.

Today again the glorious effect of her beauty,

Those very same dreamy eyes and lines of kohl,

That patina of powder setting lightly upon her cheek,

That faint writing in henna upon sandalwood-scented hands,

.

These very things are the world of one’s verse, of one’s thoughts;

These very things are the soul of the subject, the muse.

.

Until even today beneath the shadows of black and red centuries

What has befallen the children of Adam and Eve?

In the daily battle of life and death,

What will happen to us; what has happened to our ancestors?

.

Why do the many creatures of these gleaming cities

Continue to live only in the hopeless joy of dying?

Why does only hunger grow

In those fields which burst forth in bloom?

.

In each direction these mysterious, hard walls

Behind which thousands of lamps of the youth have been lit, then snuffed out

At every step, those places of slaughter of those dreams

Whose reflection illuminates thousands of minds—

.

These too are topics, and there may be many more such ones.

But those slowly opening lips of that saucy one.

Oh, the damned attractive lines of that body.

Tell me, will there be such sorcery elsewhere?

One’s subject of poetry is nothing except for these;

The abode of the poet’s mind is nothing else except for these.

.

From: Naqsh-i faryādī (Image of the Supplicant). Dihlī: Urdū Ghar, 1941. pp. 91 – 94

Mauz̤ūʻ-i suk̲h̲an  is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970