This poem was translated by Professor Carlo Coppola as part of the MULOSIGE Translations project. You can explore our collection of Urdu Poetry here.
Sipāhī / Soldier
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
.
Who is this distraught woman singing
To console her hungry children?
The smell of burning corpses;
Life shrieks.
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
.
How frightened the landscape!
How the stars move in fear!
.
How youth is being murdered!
The edges of the sari are dipped in red.
.
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
The tent of darkness is falling;
My love, dawn is near!
O you who are leaving your country,
The banner of revolution has been unfurled!
.
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
.
From: Bisāt̤-i raqṣ (Dance Carpet). Ḥaidarābād, Inḍiyā: Istiqbāliyah kameṭī jashn-i Mak̲h̲dūm, 1966. pp. 90 – 91
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
.
Who is this distraught woman singing
To console her hungry children?
The smell of burning corpses;
Life shrieks.
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
.
How frightened the landscape!
How the stars move in fear!
.
How youth is being murdered!
The edges of the sari are dipped in red.
.
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
The tent of darkness is falling;
My love, dawn is near!
O you who are leaving your country,
The banner of revolution has been unfurled!
.
Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going.
.
From: Bisāt̤-i raqṣ (Dance Carpet). Ḥaidarābād, Inḍiyā: Istiqbāliyah kameṭī jashn-i Mak̲h̲dūm, 1966. pp. 90 – 91
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