(To the bloody horizon from Viet Nam to Kashmir)

.

Again, the war god set out

Holding aloft a red-flame dagger

Shrieking, roaring

With blood thirst,

With flesh hunger,

Flying in the heavens demon-like,

Walking on earth like death.

.

Let beauty be protected; children’s innocence too.

Harvests are frightened,

Fields terrified;

The spaces once fragrant with the scent of new shoots

Are drunk with a filthy gunpowder stench;

Bloodstains dapple the garment of dew,

The hems of temples, mosques, and churches.

.

Its beginning is everything;

Its end—nothing.

What is the outcome of destruction and slaughter?

A few ravaged cities; roads consumed to ashes,

Prostrated in their widowhood,

Orphanhood—tearful, wounded.

.

There is no Gautama whose affection

People put on the heart’s wounds,

The pained moonlight of its sorrowful smile,

No Gandhi

Whose martyrdom today would shield and stop every thrust;

No Nehru

Holding on to whose garment we ask: “What’s going on?”

.

A dagger has pierced the song’s heart; words decapitated;

We own nothing but helplessness;

Lamentation is useless; plaints futile;

Come, let us together call out for love,

For virtue.

             

.

From: Pairāhan-i sharar (Garment of Fire), 1965. pp. 41 – 43

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