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