O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities, I, too, have some dreams;

I, too, have some dreams!

Because of this age and its dry rivers, 

Because of the vast plains and cities’ desolations, 

Because of marauders, I grieve and despair! 

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities, 

I, too, have some dreams!

.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities, I, too, have some dreams;

I, too, have some dreams

Whose secrets are unknown even today,

Which are innocent of the repose of position and honor,

Of defilement by road dust!

They do not disappear from life’s futile struggle

And are themselves the meaning of being!

.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities,

O soothsayer, learned, noble, old—

It was you who told us the meaning of every dream,

Who told us of the conquest of heart-vanquishing sorrow;

By your hand every chain of fear crumbled.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities, I, too, have some dreams,

I, too, have some dreams!

.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities,

Dreams buried beneath our ancestors’ self-made stories of night,

Beneath the broken superstition-walls of ruined religion, 

Beneath the thoughts of the Shiraz mystic, his wine cup half-filled,

Beneath the adversity-heap of a prostrated culture!

.

Some dreams are free, but overawed by advancing light, 

They have no impulse for good 

Nor courage for evil; 

They are themselves the sweepings of that self

Bashful of themselves.

.

Some dreams, seekers of power from the turning of tools,

Dreams for which the adornment of this world means servitude to the Provider; 

Some dreams, for which man’s security means the equality of sorrow;

Some dreams, whose practice is the passion for tyranny, 

Which have neither the world nor faith.

.

Some dreams nurtured by light, but their dawn lost—

Fire which leavens the dough of love, its sparks lost; 

Dreams, aware of the whole but ignorant of parts; 

Dreams for which the rank of tearful eye is nothing, 

The heart is nothing; heads are so equal that heads are nothing, 

The expression of skill is nothing!

.

~~~

.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities,

These are not my dreams; mine are different,

My age is different.

In the new age of dreams, there are no ants and locust, no Leo and Taurus; 

None has the taste for surrender nor the passion for tyranny; 

—Everyone has a new way! 

.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities, I, too, have some dreams,

I swear by every dream—

Though hidden and veiled,

Concealing in their bosom a smiling maiden’s speech—

Every one of them holds the unity of body and thought, meaning and speech 

Like lovers whose eternally thirsty lips long for attachment 

(O happy moment).

.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities, I, too, have some dreams,

Next dreams of perfect freedom, 

Of the product of every heart-rending effort, 

Of bells tolling at the new feast of man’s birth, 

Of the stages of this earth’s grandeur, 

Or of a new heart in earth’s bosom.

.

O love, conquering and kindling the two eternities, I, too, have some dreams,

I, too, have some dreams.

.

  With Munibur Rahman

.

From: Lā = insān. (X = Man). Lāhaur: Munīr Niyāzī, 1969. pp. 68 – 72