If I could know for certain, my companions, my friends,

If I could know for certain that your heart’s weariness,

The despair of your eyes, the heat within your breast

Would be healed with my sympathy, with my love,

If my words of solace were a balm with which

Your desolate mind, devoid of light, would come to life once again,

Your consumptive youth would be cured—

If I knew this for certain, my brothers, my friends,

I would squeeze you, clasp you to my breast;

I would keep you entertained day and night, evening to morning.

I would sing you songs, soft and sweet,

Songs of waterfalls, of spring, of green meadows;

Songs of the coming of dawn, of the moon, of the planets;

 I would tell you stories of beauty and love,

Of the bodies of proud beauties cold as snow,

Melting from the passion of warm hands;

Of how the familiar fixed features of a face

Are all at once changed while still looking at them;

Of how the transparent crystal of the beloved’s cheek

Suddenly would flush from red wine;

Of how the rose petal bends from the tip of its bough;

Of how the rose-branch bends itself to the flower-picker;

Of how the hall of night is scented.

I would go on singing thus, singing thus for you;

I would keep sitting, weaving songs;

But all my songs are not at all a cure for your sorrow;

The song may be the consoler and companion, but not a surgeon;

The song is not a scalpel; it may be the balm for pain

But there is no cure for your pain except the knife. 

And this ruthless messiah is not in my power

Nor in the power of any living being in this world

Except you, yourself, you.

      

.

From: Naqsh-i faryādī (Image of the Supplicant). Dihlī: Urdū Ghar, 1941. pp. 102 – 103