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

Mashriq / The East

The house of ignorance, starvation, begging, disease, and filth;

The house of life, freshness, reason, and judgement;

The slave of God born out of superstition, the slave of tradition

In which the leprosy of centuries has been breeding.

See the East, whose arms have now dropped off,

Hear the rasping breath in the consumptive’s breast;

The naked corpse without grave and shroud, withered;

The morsel of Western kites, soaked in blood;

The graveyard devoid of sound,

A wandering spirit with no abode,

A shell of the body of the past, colourless, bereft of soul;

A death without resurrection, a drum without sound;

A continuous night with no dawn,

An earth breeding the dreams of the People of the Cave;

This earth, reared by death, will be destroyed

And a new world, a new person, will be made.

.

From: Bisāt̤-i raqṣ (Dance Carpet). Ḥaidarābād, Inḍiyā: Istiqbāliyah kameṭī jashn-i Mak̲h̲dūm, 1966. pp. 37 – 38

Mashriq  is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970

             

The house of ignorance, starvation, begging, disease, and filth;

The house of life, freshness, reason, and judgement;

The slave of God born out of superstition, the slave of tradition

In which the leprosy of centuries has been breeding.

See the East, whose arms have now dropped off,

Hear the rasping breath in the consumptive’s breast;

The naked corpse without grave and shroud, withered;

The morsel of Western kites, soaked in blood;

The graveyard devoid of sound,

A wandering spirit with no abode,

A shell of the body of the past, colourless, bereft of soul;

A death without resurrection, a drum without sound;

A continuous night with no dawn,

An earth breeding the dreams of the People of the Cave;

This earth, reared by death, will be destroyed

And a new world, a new person, will be made.

.

From: Bisāt̤-i raqṣ (Dance Carpet). Ḥaidarābād, Inḍiyā: Istiqbāliyah kameṭī jashn-i Mak̲h̲dūm, 1966. pp. 37 – 38

Mashriq  is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970