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

 Z̲ātiyāt / About Me

Whatever I have experienced,

I won’t be able to explain to anyone.

Whatever pains I have suffered,

Whatever load of sins I carry on ray bosom—

I don’t have the strength to talk about them.

I seek my story

In the books written by others,

And wherever I’m mentioned,

I efface those lines,

Blot them out with ink.

I feel that if people read them,

They’d stop me on the road and who knows what they’d ask me.

.

1965

.

From: Nayā ʻahdnāmah (New Testament). ʻAlīgaṛh: ʻAlīgaṛh Buk Hāʼūs, 1965. pp. 136 – 38

             

Whatever I have experienced,

I won’t be able to explain to anyone.

Whatever pains I have suffered,

Whatever load of sins I carry on ray bosom—

I don’t have the strength to talk about them.

I seek my story

In the books written by others,

And wherever I’m mentioned,

I efface those lines,

Blot them out with ink.

I feel that if people read them,

They’d stop me on the road and who knows what they’d ask me.

.

1965

.

From: Nayā ʻahdnāmah (New Testament). ʻAlīgaṛh: ʻAlīgaṛh Buk Hāʼūs, 1965. pp. 136 – 38