This poem was translated by Professor Carlo Coppola as part of the MULOSIGE Translations project. You can explore our collection of Urdu Poetry here.

Professor Carlo Coppola, Oakland University

Soctā hūn̲ / I Think

I think that would avoid love,

That I would make encouragement and hope strangers to my heart.

I think that love is a disgraceful madness,

A crown of useless, idiotic thoughts,

A lust for making a free man a slave,

A fanciful struggle to make a stranger one’s own.

.

I think that love is the first and the last stages of drunkenness,

That from its glow is lit the expanse of being.

I think that love is the nature of human beings;

For it to be erased is difficult;

I think that life is shining from love;

To put out this candle is now very hard.

.

I think that there are strange conditions on love;

In this civilization, there are many conditions upon happiness.

I think that love is a saddened corpse

Enshrouded in a sheet of dignity and honor;

It is a disgraced being, trampled in the age of capitalism

Kicked out from the place of veneration, religion and ethics.

.

I think that the madness of man and love

Is a futile task in such a decayed civilization.

I think that loving love will not escape alive;

Before that time when the rotting corpse will be putrefied,

It’s better that, being a stranger to love,

I search for the feeling of hatred in my heart

.

And avoid the frenzy of love,

Make the heart a stranger to encouragement and hope.

.

From: Talk̲h̲iyān̲ (Bitternesses). Dihlī: Panjābī Pustak Bhanḍār, 1963. pp. 56 – 58

             

I think that would avoid love,

That I would make encouragement and hope strangers to my heart.

I think that love is a disgraceful madness,

A crown of useless, idiotic thoughts,

A lust for making a free man a slave,

A fanciful struggle to make a stranger one’s own.

.

I think that love is the first and the last stages of drunkenness,

That from its glow is lit the expanse of being.

I think that love is the nature of human beings;

For it to be erased is difficult;

I think that life is shining from love;

To put out this candle is now very hard.

.

I think that there are strange conditions on love;

In this civilization, there are many conditions upon happiness.

I think that love is a saddened corpse

Enshrouded in a sheet of dignity and honor;

It is a disgraced being, trampled in the age of capitalism

Kicked out from the place of veneration, religion and ethics.

.

I think that the madness of man and love

Is a futile task in such a decayed civilization.

I think that loving love will not escape alive;

Before that time when the rotting corpse will be putrefied,

It’s better that, being a stranger to love,

I search for the feeling of hatred in my heart

.

And avoid the frenzy of love,

Make the heart a stranger to encouragement and hope.

.

From: Talk̲h̲iyān̲ (Bitternesses). Dihlī: Panjābī Pustak Bhanḍār, 1963. pp. 56 – 58