Wake up, light of the bedroom love;

Wake up from your bed of velvet dreams!

Though you still cling to night’s delights –

Come to this window;

Morning’s lights caress minarets

Whose heights mirror my desire.

Open those drowsy eyes

That awaken love in my heart!

.

Look at the minarets

Basking in the dawn!

Do you recall beneath their shadows

A shabby mulla 

Drowsing in a dark basement:

Like his idle god,

A demon—sorrowful,

A sign of three hundred years’ shame, 

A shame without cure?

Look: as if jungle spirits, torches in hand

Had left their lairs to prowl!

.

The market crowd rushes about madly

Like a flood

Somewhere, in each of these men’s hearts

Flickers—bride-like!

A spark of soul

But not one had the power 

To burst into a raging flame

Among them wallow 

The diseased, the poor

Nourishing cruelty beneath the sky!

.

I am but a beast of burden, tired, old!

On whom hefty, strong Hunger rides;

And like other folk

After passing a night of pleasure,

I, too, go out 

To pick through rags and trash –

Beneath that fickle sky.

At night, I, too, return to a shack.

Look at my helplessness!

Again and again I return to this window

To look at the minarets

When evening gives them a departing kiss!

.

With M. H. K. Qureshi

.

From: Māvarā (Beyond). Lāhaur: Maktabah-yi Urdū, [1940].  pp. 105 – 108