And what did I learn from other people?

Only this: To support another man’s statement with true or false words,

To conceal the uncertainty of the heart,

To bend my head before every dullard,

To say with a smile, Sir, 

No one here knows the art of living better than you.

.

However absurd the conversation might be,

The forehead must be—unruffled, the ears alert;

The eyes must be drowned in deep thought —

Like a philosopher’s.

As if you’ve never seen men before nor heard about them.

Show them all this; otherwise

(the day when—and that day’s not far off)

You won’t come and these people will say, ‘The idiot 

Doesn’t know the art of conversation.”

(aren’t you afraid of this?)

One is afraid of how, in the present age, 

A person should survive —

After falling in peoples’ estimation? 

In this city, populated with millions,

There is not a one

Whose faith goes beyond any existence, being. 

Any reality or story of the Gabriel of the present age (the newspaper).

.

What did I learn from people — 

To live in cowardice and ignorance

To live in eternal fear:

“To say that everyone is equal;

To think that the way of the crowd was the only way.”

.

What did I learn from people?

.

    October 1960

.

From: Dard kā shahr (City of Suffering). Lāhaur: Naʼī maṭbūʻāt. 1965. pp. 53 – 54