My heart is on fire and my tongue unable to express itself;

What should I say? What thing is this Capitalism?

She’s a tempest on whose path is the abode of the poor man; 

She’s a lightning whose target is the harvest of every farmer;

She holds the candelabra of civilisation in her hands

But sucks even the blood from the worker’s body; 

This human calamity is the customer of human blood, 

Deadlier than an epidemic, more dreadful than death;

Neither has she seen the evil-doer, nor has she tested the good.

She has throttled throats, squeezing them in shackles;

She is a no-escape calamity; she has strange ways;

She has consumed ruined houses in her wrath;

Her allure creates havoc; her oppressions take away life;

Her feet always fall on the chest of the poor;

In some place she writes in blood the register of wealth and gold;

In some place she builds palaces of bones;

She staggers drinking the poor’s sacred blood;

She dances in the palaces, struts in ballrooms;

In appearance she has filled the lap of a few pharaohs,

But she has turned the world’s whole garden into hell;

Beasts bow their heads in acceptance of her power;

Her glance is the cruellest; her breath, the foulest;

Wherever she goes, she is accompanied by the tools of destruction;

Bad luck travels in her company; Satan walks with her,

Often ravaging innocent people on the roads;

She sings divine songs concealing herself in shrines;

She snatches spears from the hands of the grave;

She’s a goblin who snatches children out of people’s laps;

She snatches one’s honour, one’s shame;

She snatches human nature from human beings,

Sheds the tumult of massacre, the calamity of Alexander and Darius;

She is the slave girl who adores the assembly of worldly gods;

She always rides the chariot of bones, having drunk blood;

Time cries out when she turns from one side to the other;

Thundering and roaring, she comes into the field today as well;

But she is dead-drunk; she stumbles at every step

Greetings, old friends! Her glass is now over flowing!

Raise tempests. The foundations of the house are now weakened.

              1937

.

From: Āhang (Melody; 1938). Dihlī: Āzād Kitāb Ghar. 1956. pp. 88 – 90

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