(August 47)

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This spotted dawn, this dawn bitten by night,

Not the dawn for which we had waited so badly;

Not the dawn which comrades wished for

When they set out to find, somewhere or other,

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The final destination of the stars in the desert of the sky.

At least somewhere then there should be a shore for lazy-waved night;

At least somewhere the ship of the heart’s sorrow should dock.

When the comrades set forth on the mysterious highway of their youthful blood,

How many hands fell upon the hem of their robes.

From the impatient bedchambers of the cities of beauty

Arms kept crying out, bodies kept inviting them.

But the deal of the face of dawn was more precious

The very skirts of the beautiful maids of glory were very near.

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Their desire was as if effervescent; their tiredness suppressed;

It’s said the union of the destination and the path to it has already occurred.

That the patterns of behaviour, or of suffering people, are already changed.

The pleasure of union is allowed; the torture of separation prohibited.

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The heart’s fire, the desire of the glance, the burning of the heart,

On none of these is there a trace of the remedy for the state of separation.

Where did the beautiful lady—the breeze—come from; where did she go?

Even now the lamp lit in the street knows nothing of her;

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Even now the heaviness of night does not wane.

No moment of release for the eye, for the heart.

Move on, for that destination has not come even now.

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From: Dast-i ṣabā (Hand of the Wind). Dihlī: Senṭral Buk Ḍipo, 1952. pp. 22- 24

Ṣubḥ-i āzādī is quoted in full in Urdu Poetry, 1935-1970