This poem was translated by Professor Carlo Coppola as part of the MULOSIGE Translations project. You can explore our collection of Urdu Poetry here.
Siyāsī līḍar ke nām / To the Political Leader
For many years, these helpless, bound hands
Have clawed into the hard, black chest of night,
Like twigs battling the ocean,
Like butterflies assaulting a mountain. And now
There are so many wounds on the stony, black chest of night
That in whatever direction one looks, everywhere,
Something like a network that light has created.
From afar comes the sound of the throbbing of dawn;
These very hands, then, are your stock, your hope!
Do you have anything else? Only these very hands!
You do not accept the victory of darkness, but
Are you willing to accept that these hands may be cut off?
That the day which throbs in the Eastern hiding place
May be crushed beneath the iron corpse of night?
.
From: Dast-i ṣabā (Hand of the Wind). Dihlī: Senṭral Buk Ḍipo, 1952.pp. 16 – 17
Siyāsī līḍar ke nām is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970
For many years, these helpless, bound hands
Have clawed into the hard, black chest of night,
Like twigs battling the ocean,
Like butterflies assaulting a mountain. And now
There are so many wounds on the stony, black chest of night
That in whatever direction one looks, everywhere,
Something like a network that light has created.
From afar comes the sound of the throbbing of dawn;
These very hands, then, are your stock, your hope!
Do you have anything else? Only these very hands!
You do not accept the victory of darkness, but
Are you willing to accept that these hands may be cut off?
That the day which throbs in the Eastern hiding place
May be crushed beneath the iron corpse of night?
.
From: Dast-i ṣabā (Hand of the Wind). Dihlī: Senṭral Buk Ḍipo, 1952.pp. 16 – 17
Siyāsī līḍar ke nām is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970
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